Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN IRELAND

Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference

Mr. Archer: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what are the dates and agenda for the next Intergovernmental Conference under the Anglo-Irish agreement.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Tom King): Dates of meetings of the Intergovernmental Conference are not released in advance. But while it is not our normal practice to release the agenda in advance, the joint statement issued after the last meeting on 11 March indicated that at its next meeting the conference would consider cross-border security co-operation, the development of relations between the security forces and the community, legal matters, measures to enhance public confidence in the administration of justice, and cross-border economic and social co-operation.

Mr. Archer: Has it struck the right hon. Gentleman that while the political orators have been debating the merits of the emperor's new clothes, many people in Northern Ireland have been waiting to see whether he will be any warmer? After four months, can the Secretary of State point to anything that has changed in daily life in Northern Ireland because it was discussed in the Intergovernmental Conference? If not, when and where can we begin gathering in the harvest?

Mr. King: The most important prize for many will be to get greater confidence in the effectiveness of the security forces and in the fight against terrorism. As I have said to the House, that will be a progressive movement and it will obviously take time for it to develop. However, I am encouraged by the start of the co-operation, particularly in much of the work now taking place between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Garda under the leadership of the Commissioner and the Chief Constable. I think that the first fruits were shown in the by-elections in the switch of votes from those who support violence to those who support the constitutional Nationalist approach, which was a further encouraging development.

Mr. Gow: Will my right hon. Friend consider removing the secretariat for the Intergovernmental Conference from the Province? Will he also consider the advantages that would flow if future meetings of the Intergovernmental Conference at ministerial level were to take place not in the Province but in London?

Mr. King: The word secretariat has led many people to believe that it is a much more substantial body than is the case. In fact, the secretariat is made up of the secretaries of the conference. The agreement makes it clear that its duty is to service the conference. Obviously it is sensible for that to be organised in a co-operative way. I have picked my hon. Friend up on the point that he made, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has just written to the leaders of the two Unionist parties. The letter makes it absolutely clear that we are committed to the agreement and will not suspend it. There is an important statement that we are prepared to operate the agreement in a sensitive way and encourage Unionists to enter into discussions on a wide range of matters. I very much hope that that invitation will be accepted and that we can sit down to sensible discussions about the whole range of issues which are of concern to the people of Northern Ireland.

Mr. McNamara: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that it helps confidence in the accord, particularly among the Nationalist community, if members of his ministerial team seek out members of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill and advise them not to hear oral evidence from the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) on the role of the Ulster Defence Regiment?

Mr. King: I am not aware of that matter. Obviously it is a matter for the Select Committee and its dealings.

Mr. Stanbrook: Does my right hon. Friend think that the cause of the Anglo-Irish agreement has been advanced or retarded, by the refusal of the Dublin court to grant Britain's recent application for the extradition of Evelyn Glenholmes?

Mr. King: My hon. Friend will know that part of the very clear objective of the Anglo-Irish agreement is to improve the efficiency of the extradition procedures. I should have thought that all the evidence of those events, upon which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has commented, makes it ever more clear that those arrangements need to be improved.

Mr. Mallon: Will the Secretary of State confirm that a sizeable section of the population in Northern Ireland are in favour of the accord and want to see it working? Will he consider directing some of his remarks to that section of the community at the earliest possible opportunity, instead of expressing his own inherent Unionism at every opportunity?

Mr. King: The hon. Gentleman will have heard my words. I have made it absolutely clear that we are committed to and will not suspend the agreement. I am well aware of that fact. I recognise that one of the consequences of the agreement was a recognition among the Nationalist community of the opportunity of progress by constitutional means rather than by having to support the men of violence. I thought that I had made my views very clear on that point. At the same time, it is not in the Nationalist interest to have the degree of misunderstanding and discontent that undoubtedly exists among the Unionist community over the Anglo-Irish agreement. I am anxious that those fears and misunderstandings should be relieved and that genuine concerns should be met in discussions with the Unionists on a number of aspects, such as methods of consultation and involvement that are available to them as well.

Flags and Emblems (Display) Act 1954

Mr. Bell: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what representations have been made through the Inter-Governmental Conference concerning the repeal of the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act 1954.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Nicholas Scott): The Irish side put forward views and proposals about the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act 1954 at the meeting of the Intergovernmental Conference on 10 January. The Government responded at the conference meeting on 11 March.

Mr. Bell: The Flags and Emblems (Display) Act 1954 has been irrelevant for a long time. Although a statement was made by the Government during the discussions to which the Minister referred that there is no such thing as joint authority and that decisions will not be taken on a joint authority basis, will he nevertheless assure the House that this legislation will be repealed during the next parliamentary Session?

Mr. Scott: No. We shall have to consult widely within Northern Ireland about any proposals that are made for a draft order which might include proposals relating to the Flags and Emblems (Display) Act 1954. It is worth being very clear about the Act, which I know has a symbolic effect on both sides of the community in Northern Ireland. It does not ban the flying of the tricolour in Northern Ireland, although there is widespread misapprehension that that is the case. However, it gives special protection to the Union flag in Northern Ireland, which evidently is not considered to be necessary in Great Britain. There is some argument at least for saying that we ought to move towards greater parity of treatment in this matter between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Mr. Cash: On the question of the scrutiny of legislation and the procedures that are available in the context of Northern Ireland, will my hon. Friend consider the proposal that has been made for a Select Committee and whether that might provide a forum within which matters such as legislation could be dealt with, having regard to the need to have a round table discussion between hon. Members within the context of the Union as a whole?

Mr. Scott: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said in her letter to the Unionist leaders that she is anxious to talk to them and to discuss what kind of mechanisms might be appropriate for discussions on a wide range of matters in Northern Ireland, not only those that are concerned with the Anglo-Irish agreement. Ministers in Northern Ireland regret very much that the arrangements for consultation between them and the Assembly are not working at the moment because of the refusal of the Assembly to carry out its statutory duties.

Mr. Peter Barry (Talks)

Mr. Flannery: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he has any plans to visit the Republic of Ireland to hold further discussions with the Irish Foreign Minister.

Mr. Tom King: I have at present no plans to visit the Republic of Ireland.

Mr. Flannery: May we assume that when the Minister does speak to his equivalent or to representatives of the

Republic of Ireland he will give them assurances that the horrific details of the so-called day of action on 3 March, which are now steadily filtering through to those of us who are keenly interested, will in no way deter the Government from treading the path that they have now decided to tread and that they will not be put off by events of that nature, no matter how many times they are repeated?

Mr. King: There is not much doubt that many of the events of 3 March horrified the overwhelming majority of people in the Province, whatever their persuasion or loyalty. I believe that it is the fervent wish of the vast majority never to see such scenes repeated. I give the assurance that I have given before from the Dispatch Box, that Parliament will not be intimidated by such violence. If it were, the prospects for all in the Province would be much more unhappy.

Sir Philip Goodhart: When my right hon. Friend next communicates with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Republic of Ireland, will he inquire why no attempt was made to arrest Miss Glenholmes on a charge of being a suspected member of the IRA, which is an offence in the Republic? Will he tell the Minister that Dublin's reaction to the Glenholmes affair has reminded some people in this country that too many people in Dublin still have an equivocal attitude to terrorism?

Mr. King: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a statement on this matter. There is to be a disciplinary inquiry by the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. We are concerned to ensure that extradition works effectively and wish to achieve maximum cooperation with all countries, expecially the Republic of Ireland, to ensure that terrorists are brought to book.

Mr. Hayes: When my right hon. Friend next sees Mr. Barry, will he make it clear to him that the Glenholmes fiasco has nothing to do with the Anglo-Irish agreement? Will he make it clear also that many Conservative Members commend, rather than castigate, the Garda for its action? The Garda's political bosses took many political risks on their side of the water.

Mr. King: I note my hon. Friend's comments. I recognise the efforts by the Garda in this respect. I am confident of the good will of the Government of the Republic in seeking to improve the arrangements where genuinely there are terrorists who may be under their jurisdiction to ensure that the procedures that exist between the two countries operate fairly and effectively.

Anglo-Irish Agreement

Mr. Dubs: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a further statement on the Anglo-Irish agreement.

Mr. Alton: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the issues discussed at the Anglo-Irish Conference meeting on Tuesday 11 March.

Mr. Tom King: A further meeting of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference took place in Belfast on 11 March. It was useful and constructive. The issues discussed are set out in the joint statement, issued after the meeting, which I have placed in the Library. In addition to the joint statement, I gave a press conference afterwards to answer questions on the matters discussed.

Mr. Dubs: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Anglo-Irish agreement could be significantly enhanced if there were closer relationships between this House and the Dail in Dublin? Will he therefore use his influence, nothwithstanding the fact that it is more a matter for the House than for the Government, to ensure that an Anglo-Irish parliamentary tier is established as quickly as possible? Misunderstandings between London and Dublin would thereby be reduced and the basis for the Anglo-Irish agreement would have much more support.

Mr. King: As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, it is a matter for the House and, obviously, not one that falls to me. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has explained the Government's view to the House.

Mr. Alton: Given the concern registered by Dr. Garret FitzGerald during his recent visit to the United Kingdom about the continued discharges of radioactive waste from Sellafield, was that issue discussed at the last meeting of the intergovernmental body? If not, will it be on the agenda of the next meeting? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the report of the Select Committee on the Environment on the discharge of radioactive waste should be considered, and that the continuation of discharges, which is making the Irish sea the most radioactive body of water in the world, is undermining good Anglo-Irish relations?

Mr. King: I do not think that that sort of emotive comment is particularly helpful or objective in any scientific terms. On the issue of Sellafield, there is a Republic interest, as it were, in the island of Ireland in relation to the mainland. Radioactive waste was not discussed at the meeting. It is principally a matter for consideration between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the Republic. It is not specifically a Northern Ireland matter.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: While it may be encouraging to my right hon. Friend that there have been useful discussions with the Irish Government, is it not a tragedy, and perhaps somewhat understandable, that we still have no active participation in this House by the Official Unionist and the Democratic Unionist parties? Can something be done to encourage those parties back to the House, as their absence from the Chamber—the reasons for which I understand—is difficult to defend to the rest of the country as we are, after all, one united country?

Mr. King: I certainly share to the full the concern expressed by my hon. Friend about the absence of the Unionist Members from the Parliament of the United Kingdom, for which they recently stood for re-election, but in which, in the majority, they have declined to take part. I should like to repeat a sentiment which echoes the strong feelings of a substantial number of Unionists in the Province about the letter from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) and to the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), in which she invited them to enter into talks without preconditions to discuss their concerns to seek ways to make progress. All sensible people of goodwill will recognise that either there will be talks or there will be more serious consequences if the situation is allowed to drift and if the present impasse is allowed to continue.
I hope that I can say from the Dispatch Box, on behalf of the Government and, I hope, with the support of all hon.

Members, that there must be talks. I hope that the Unionist Members will accept the invitation from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and enter into talks as soon as possible.

Mr. Favell: Will there be any discussions in those talks on the integration of schoolchildren of different religious persuasions? After all, the problems in the southern States of America—the Klu Klux Klan and the extreme Right—were only resolved finally by the bussing of schoolchildren.

Mr. King: As my hon. Friend knows, there has been some progress in that connection. However, the principle of parental choice is one which the Government have respected. This is a very difficult issue which has not arisen so far in the Conference, although I completely understand why my hon. Friend sees the matter as one of the most important developments that could take place.

Mr. Frank Cook: Does the Secretary of State mean by his last reply that he seeks the demolition of the dual system of education?

Mr. King: I do not know how on earth the hon. Gentleman could have drawn that conclusion from my remarks.

Mr. Gow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in her letter of 21 March to the Leader of the Ulster Unionist party my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that she was prepared to consider operating the Anglo-Irish agreement in what she described as "a sensitive way"? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there is nothing in the agreement which states that the secretariat—the agreement's word, not mine—has to be in the Province, nothing which states that the meetings of the Intergovernmental Conference at ministerial level must be held in the Province, and nothing which requires Ministers to meet every month?

Mr. King: The agreement, as my hon. Friend recognises, refers to regular and frequent meetings. The communiqué states that meetings will normally be held in Belfast, but what my hon. Friend has said is otherwise technically correct. What we need to do, and this is all part of the discussions that need to be held, is to explore the ways in which the Unionists can become involved and meet some of their concerns and anxieties about the present situation.

Mr. Bell: May I say from the Opposition Benches that we deeply regret the fact that elected representatives of Northern Ireland are not here in their rightful place to discuss the affairs of Northern Ireland today? May we also associate ourselves with the remarks of the Secretary of State in connection with the invitation given by the Prime Minister to the Unionist parties? It is right and proper that they should take up that invitation for further talks. There is nothing in the Anglo-Irish agreement or in the Conference that prevents Unionist leaders from talking to the elected Government of the United Kingdom.

Mr. King: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comments. The Government made it clear through the Prime Minister's letter that we recognise the Unionists' opposition to the Anglo-Irish agreement and that any subsequent talks would be without prejudice to that position. We are prepared to talk on any or all of the matters that were mentioned when my right hon. Friend


the Prime Minister and I previously met the two leaders of the Unionist party, including matters on which the agreement has no bearing. We have made what we hope is as helpful a response as possible to the Unionist leaders, recognising the realities of their position and the realities of the agreement.
It would be absolutely tragic if, in the face of that offer, the Unionist leaders were not even prepared to come and talk without pre-conditions or prejudice to their position. That is a step which must be taken, and I hope that they will respond in that way.

Education Budget

Mr. Favell: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the proposed budget for the Northern Ireland Department of Education for 1986–87; and how this compares with the budget for 1985–86.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Dr. Brian Mawhinney): The proposed budget is £662 million—an increase of £42 million.

Mr. Favell: Given the pressure on education and library board budgets for next year, is my hon. Friend satisfied that sufficient progress is being made in the rationalisation of school places?

Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is on to a good point. There is over-provision of school places, especially in Belfast, and we need to continue an orderly rationalisation process. One of the reasons why we are not getting full benefit from our best-ever teacher-pupil ratios is that teachers are spread too thinly over too many schools.

Mr. Archer: Does the Minister appreciate that while he boasts of the increased resources available to education, talk in the local communities is about how many school cleaners will lose their jobs, how many dinner ladies can expect redundancy notices, how many nursery places will be left after the cuts, whether the Belfast school of music can continue the activities expected in a major city, and whether school buildings will receive any attention other than the most basic repairs? Has he ever felt sufficiently curious to consider why there is such a discrepancy in the picture given by his accountants and what is actually happening in the schools?

Dr. Mawhinney: First, I am not boasting, I am simply relating the facts of the case. Secondly, I am aware of the matters that the right hon. and learned Member has mentioned, some of which were raised when I met representatives of some of the boards during the process that they have to undertake to determine their budget allocation proposals, which they then submit to me. So far, although I believe that some of the budget proposals have reached the Department, I have not seen any of them.

Mr. Lilley: Will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that in the school system in Northern Ireland, which has retained a large measure of selection, performance as measured by examination results and otherwise is now far superior to that of schools on the mainland? Will he draw from that fact conclusions from which schools on the mainland might benefit and reflect on the advantages to employers who may wish to employ people in Northern Ireland?

Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the better A-level results that are emerging

from the Province compared with schools in England, but he will bear in mind that across the breadth of the educational spectrum results in Northern Ireland vary.

United States Financial Aid

Mr. Wallace: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he expects Northern Ireland to be in receipt of the first tranche of promised American financial aid; and what are his priorities for its use.

Mr. Scott: Legislation providing for United States assistance to both parts of Ireland is before Congress. I am not in a position to speculate when a Bill will become law or to what use any assistance might be put.

Mr. Wallace: With unemployment in Northern Ireland running at more than 20 per cent., does the Minister agree that the first priority for any additional funds must be the creation of jobs, not through De Lorean-type fiascos, but through investment in small businesses and infrastructure projects? Will he give the House some idea of the total amount expected to be gathered from American aid?

Mr. Scott: I think that it would be premature to speculate about the amount. A number of proposals have been put either to the House of Representatives or to the Senate. Until we see the size of the amounts involved, it is probably wrong to start making plans to spend the money, but I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that one of the top priorities for any money that may come through should be the creation of jobs.

Mr. Budgen: Is my hon. Friend aware that many people regard such aid not as generous but as patronising, ignorant and biased? Has he any proposals to offer advice or aid to the Americans in terms of how they might deal with the appalling problems of their inner cities?

Mr. Scott: The short answer to that is no, Sir, but I am sure that if the Americans came to us for advice we would freely give it. Let me make it clear that we entered into the agreement on its merits. There was no question of the United States, or the promise of United States aid, playing any part in the decision of the Government of the United Kingdom to enter into the agreement. Nevertheless, we are grateful to the United States for wishing to acknowledge, and to make a tangible display of acknowledging, the desire of the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland to work towards peace and stability in Northern Ireland. The final decisions will, of course, have to await the passage of legislation through Congress.

Mr. Mallon: May I ask the Minister to consider patronising the constituency of Newry and Armagh when the aid becomes available? We would have no objection to that at all.
Does not inward investment into Northern Ireland become very difficult when a Government Department responsible for Government training schemes is presiding over a system in which, out of 116 senior posts, 16 are held by Catholics? Will the Minister ask the Fair Employment Agency to initiate an immediate investigation of that matter so that people who want to invest money in the north of Ireland will not have to look at that sort of thing?

Mr. Scott: My hon. Friends will have heard about the matter raised in the second part of the question and will no doubt consider the situation. I note the hon.


Gentleman's first question, but until we know whether there is to be a fund and how big it will be it is impossible to speculate about the uses to which it might be put.

Mr. Chapman: If, and when, the money comes, will my hon. Friend seriously consider using at least a part of it to mount a publicity campaign to attract industry and jobs to the Province under the slogan, "Come, make your place of work in Northern Ireland. There is far less lawlessness here than there is in the United States"?

Mr. Scott: The Industrial Development Board, in particular, has for some time been conducting a sustained publicity campaign in Great Britain and the United States, clearly pointing out the attractions of Northern Ireland for potential inward investment and paying special attention to the overwhelming normality that is the reality of life for most people in the Province.

Security

Mr. Maclennan: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the current security situation in the Province.

Mr. Tom King: Since I last answered questions in the House on 27 February, two members of the security forces and one civilian have died in incidents arising from the security situation in the Province. I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning these murders. In addition, more than 100 members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Army have been injured, many of the former duing the shameful events of 3 March.
Since the beginning of the year a total of 55 people have been charged with serious offences, 52 weapons, 2,700 rounds of ammunition and 1,100 lb of explosives have been recovered.

Mr. Maclennan: That is a sombre report. Has the Secretary of State spoken to the GOC about the use of mortar bombs in the attempted attack on the UDR base at Kilkeel on 15 March, and can he make a statement about that?

Mr. King: I have spoken to the GOC about that matter. The mortar attacks have posed a serious threat. The security forces have been anxious to take the most positive steps to ensure proper protection, especially of police stations, which have been subject to attack, and to try to counter that most unattractive technique.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: While I regret the large number of members of the RUC who have been killed over the 50-odd years of problems in Northern Ireland, may I ask my right hon. Friend to accept that the members of the RUC themselves to not wish to be armed, that they feel that because they are armed they are natural targets, and that, further, they feel that they are not totally protected by the rest of the security forces?

Mr. King: That would be the long-term aim, but I, do not think that it is a practical possibility at present.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Will the right hon. Gentleman try to come to an understanding that, whatever happens over Easter and in the weeks beyond, the ultimate responsibility will lie, as ever, with the ambiguities and insincerities of the policy of successive British Governments towards Northern Ireland and its people?

Mr. King: We all have a responsibility at present, not to anticipate trouble, but to seek in every way we can to

discourage any such trouble from taking place. I hope that I can look to the right hon. Gentleman, in his position as a Member of this House, to join with all hon. Members in saying that the right way to resolve the difficulties, ambiguities or uncertainties is by discussion and consultation, and that at no time can there be a case for violence and confrontation.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is not the security position in Northern Ireland aggravated by payments to the IRA under kidnap insurance arrangements? Why is it that the Government repeatedly ask me to produce evidence when they know that those policies are being sold, when that is common knowledge in the City, and when it amounts to £400 million worth of business every year? Why do the Government not investigate those matters, which they know are illegal under section 10 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1976? Why do they insist on turning a blind eye? Is it that they do not want to do anything about the matter?

Mr. King: Nobody could accuse the Government of not wishing to take every possible step to fight terrorism. As the hon. Gentleman has been told, we are seeking to take every step that we can, but if he has evidence that is not available to us, he should produce it.

Mr. Mallon: Will the Secretary of State confirm that probably one of the most serious security issues at present and for the next few months will be the marches that will take place? Will he confirm that the march which is organised by so-called Loyalists in Portadown for next Monday is nothing more than a coat-trailing exercise in triumphalism, geared to exacerbate sectarian feelings and to promote the type of sectarian strife that we saw last July?

Mr. King: I recognise the tradition of marching that exists in Northern Ireland and the more recent attempts to turn them into deliberately provocative incidents. I hope that all who care about law and order in the Province will recognise the present peculiarly sensitive atmosphere and the risks of such provocation and that all responsible people in the Province will recognise the need to avoid such provocation. I am confident that the RUC will be anxious in its responsibilities, which are clear, and the Chief Constable in his operational responsibility to protect innocent people from such provocation.

Commonwealth Games

Mr. Bellingham: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is his policy towards Belfast seeking to stage the 1994 Commonwealth Games.

Dr. Mawhinney: I welcome the initiative shown by the Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games Council and the Northern Ireland Assembly in indicating support for staging the games in Northern Ireland, and I have recently established a working party to consider the feasibility of doing so.

Mr. Bellingham: Is my hon. Friend aware that one of the strengths of the Irish is that sport transcends politics and religion? Surely the examples of Barry McGuigan and all-Ireland rugger demonstrate that dramatically? One can add to that the sporting exploits of the right hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Mason) when he was Secretary


of State for Northern Ireland. In the light of that, surely no effort should be spared in attempts to get the games to Belfast?

Dr. Mawhinney: I am pleased that my hon. Friend shares my enthusiasm at the prospect of the games being staged in Northern Ireland, but he will understand that it is necessary to explore seriously all the various aspects of the staging of the games before a decision is made. That is exactly what I have asked the working party to do, and I hope to receive its report in February 1987.

Mr. Forth: Can my hon. Friend give an undertaking that every effort will be made to seek methods of funding such an activity through the private sector, in order to protect the public purse against the type of damage that can be inflicted on it by unsuccessful events of this type, should they occur?

Dr. Mawhinney: I can assure my hon. Friend that the working party is mindful of the point that he raises, and that it will be part of its deliberations before it writes its report.

Harland and Wolff

Mr. Cash: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many working days have been lost through industrial action in Harland and Wolff in each of the years 1982 to 1985.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Dr. Rhodes Boyson): Harland and Wolff has an excellent industrial relations record. In the years in question Harland and Wolff was never closed by strike action. I shall arrange for the detailed figures of man days lost in these years—very low figures indeed—to be published in the Official Report.

Mr. Cash: Can my hon. Friend assure the House that the tender submitted by Harland and Wolff for the AOR did not contain any element of subsidy?

Dr. Boyson: I can certainly assure the House of that, as I did when some two weeks ago when questioned by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). We put in PA Management Consultants, an independent and interationally respected firm to review fully the terms of Harland and Wolff's bid. It concluded that the tender was comprehensively costed, contains a profit margin, and did not benefit in any way from cost subsidy.

Mr. Stephen Ross: Anyone who knows John Parker and who has visited Harland and Wolff will know that it is a most up-to-date shipyard and has excellent management. I hope that Ministers are supporting its application for both or at least on of these orders, and I hope, too, that Harland and Wolff will be successful.

Dr. Boyson: I am grateful to the hon. Member for his comment. Obviously Northern Ireland Ministers are supporting Harland and Wolff. Between the first and the fourth of the Blue Star refrigeration cargo ships that were handed over, there was a 22 per cent. increase in productivity. Apart from one ship, which suffered fire damage while it was being built, they were all delivered on time. Northern Ireland Ministers are supporting the bid by Harland and Wolff. It is a competitive bid without any subsidies.

Mr. Fallon: Will my hon. Friend confirm that public spending last year on industry and unemployment in

Northern Ireland was some 404 per cent. higher per capita than it was in England? Does he accept that there will be strong resentment in the north-east of England if this order is stolen from Tyneside because of public subsidy in Northern Ireland?

Dr. Boyson: If my hon. Friend had listened to my earlier reply, he would have heard me say that PA Mangagement Consultants has gone into this. There is no cross-subsidisation. It is a genuine tender that was economically worked out. Hon Members in all parts of the House have recognised for a long time that Northern Ireland has a problem of extremely high unemployment. As money is switched from the Treasury to areas in the north-east and to other areas because of depression and high unemployment, Northern Ireland, as one of those areas of high unemployment and economic difficulty, has also received money.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: Is the Minister aware of the consequences to Swan Hunter of not getting this order? It will result in 2,000 redundancies on Tyneside. He has given the House assurances about costings and cross-subsidies, but if what he says turns out not to be true and Harland and Wolff obtains the order, who will pick up the price tag? Will it not be the British taxpayer?

Dr. Boyson: All hon. Members are aware that if one shipyard gets a contract another one does not. I have sympathy for the people who are made redundant in any shipyard. This competition is between a shipyard in the north-east, in the hon. Member's constituency, and Harland and Wolff in Northern Ireland. In the opinion of Northern Ireland Ministers and, I am sure, in the opinion of all Government Ministers, the judgment should be made on the basis of which of the tenders is the fairer, which offers the better delivery date, the yard from which the better ship is likely to come and the one which provides the lower cost to the Exchequer.
I shall not try to evade any of the points made by the hon. Member. I say to him that it will not be the British taxpayer who subsidises this order. This is a defence contract and, for that reason, must have a built-in profit margin. One of the problems for Harland and Wolff is that, in comparison with other shipyards, it has been dependent upon ordinary cargo shipping, and until recently has not had any defence contracts. I am sure that all hon. Members are aware that there is probably not a shipyard in the world able to build civil shipping at a profit. All our shipyards depend for profit on defence contracts.

Following are the figures:

Man days lost
Man days lost per worker
Man hours lost as per cent. of total


1982
124
0·95
0·052


1983
865
7·78
0·436


1984
207
2·06
0·116


1985
159
1·71
0·096

Number


Work force at


1982–83
6,162


1983–84
5,309


1984–85
4,998

One-day Strike

Mr. Stephen Ross: asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will give the estimated cost to (a) the public purse and (b) private individuals of the damage caused during the course of the one-day strike on Monday 3 March.

Mr. Scott: Full information is not yet available. However, up to 14 March, 281 notices of intention to claim compensation for damage to property had been served on my right hon. Friend. The cost of police overtime is estimated at £470,000. There is no doubt that the events of 3 March caused grave damage to Northern Ireland, both financially and in terms of its reputation.

Mr. Ross: I hope that wide publicity will be given to the Minister's answer and that we shall get more detailed information when the size of the claims that have been submitted are known. May I express the hope that the politicians in Northern Ireland who helped to organise the day of strike will take note of the figures and understand that the rest of the country feels great anger about the figures that are likely to be involved?

Mr. Scott: I would wish to echo that sentiment. Many disgraceful things happened on 3 March and grave damage was done to the reputation of Northern Ireland in the wider world. I hope that there will be no repetition of it.

Dr. Godman: As it has been alleged that certain UDR personnel were involved in the disturbances, may I remind the Secretary of State that he said earlier today that he was quite unaware of the charge that one of his junior Ministers had sought to dissuade Conservative Members of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill from taking oral evidence from the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon)? Will the Secretary of State investigate this most serious charge and report to the House?

Mr. Scott: I find myself in exactly the same position as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I have no knowledge of the charge to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. The allegations that members of the UDR were involved in what took place on 3 March are being investigated by the appropriate authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Kirkwood: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 27 March.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having meetings with ministerial colleagues and others later today.

Mr. Kirkwood: Will the Prime Minister take time out of her busy day today to study the positions that are being taken by various countries contributing to the multi-fibre arrangement talks that will take place next week in Geneva? Is she aware of the potential damage that could be done to the domestic market, in which substantial firms in my constituency, such as Pringle of Hawick and Barrie Knitwear, operate, if the volume of imports outwith the EEC is much increased beyond existing levels? Will the right hon. Lady give us an assurance that she will use her

authority to try to sustain the limits that are set out in the current EEC mandate, so that they cannot be breached in the bilateral discussions that will flow from next week's talks? Will she seek to use her influence with her American friends to try to make them less isolationist, so that they get together with the EEC negotiators to establish a fair framework of international textile trading?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is talking about an extremely important series of negotiations that are to start in Geneva next week. The Ministers for Foreign Affairs set the mandate in great detail—the hon. Gentleman will know that these documents are decided in great detail. Therefore, the negotiations must take place within that detailed mandate. The negotiators would have to go back for another one if it were to be altered.
I do not think that there is any point in trying to put pressure on the United States at the moment. It is possible that it will make its position clear once the negotiations have started. We shall, of course, take an interest in its position, which will be extremely important for many of our constituencies.

Mr. Sims: Has my right hon. Friend noted that in the course of the Easter recess the Greater London council will cease to exist, with the result that many London ratepayers will be receiving rate demands that will be substantially lower than those of previous years? Would she care to draw the attention of Londoners to the close association between these two events?

The Prime Minister: Being a London Member, I am very much aware of what my hon. Friend has said. The GLC will go out of existence. It has long outlived its usefulness because so many of its duties have been transferred to other bodies or other councils. I agree with my hon. Friend that the ratepayers of London are already breathing a sigh of relief at the extinction of the GLC.

Mr. Kinnock: As the right hon. Lady is a London Member, does she think that, on the day on which an authoritative report is published showing that 600,000 people in the London boroughs are either homeless or without a secure home, it is just or sensible that her Government have intervened to prevent the expenditure of necessary moneys on the improvement of properties throughout those London boroughs?

The Prime Minister: The Government have an excellent record in the private and public sector. The number of renovations has exceeded those under the previous Government, and there are already more houses. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman also looks at the number of council properties that are vacant, some of which have been vacant for over a year.

Mr. Kinnock: The Government have the worst ever record on housing. They have made a 59 per cent. cut in public spending on housebuilding and house improvement in the public sector since they first came into office, and they have betrayed the needs of old and young people who require accommodation. Instead of resorting to the kinds of words that she does, why does the right hon. Lady not take note of the reports of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Department of the Environment and the Church of England, which say that priority should be given to a real housing programme?

The Prime Minister: There are well over 1 million more dwellings than there were during the lifetime of the


previous Government, and house improvements in the public and private sector far exceed those under the previous Government.

Sir Hugh Rossi: If, as a result of recent problems regarding extradition, it is decided to make changes within the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, will my right hon. Friend ensure that recruitment does not take place from among those who advise the Leader of the Opposition on expulsions from the Labour party?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes his point very effectively.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Does the Prime Minister find it acceptable that the armed forces of the United States should violate the mainland territory of an independent country in North Africa, and will she distance the United Kingdom from that action?

The Prime Minister: As I said on Tuesday, I believe that the United States is absolutely within its rights to keep international waters and airspace open. When there is an unwarranted attack on aircraft in international air space from the land of another country, the United States has the right to defend its planes under article 51.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: Will my right hon. Friend try to persuade President Reagan to turn his attention away from his Libyan sideshow towards the fundamental problem in the middle east—the future of the Palestinians? Does she agree that the absence of any form of diplomatic peace process in the middle east, when combined with the growing repression on the West Bank and in Gaza, where there have been increased deportations and detentions without trial, can only fuel international terrorism and bring the prospect of armed conflict in the middle east that bit closer?

The Prime Minister: I agree that the fact that there are no negotiations in prospect at the moment over resolving the main Arab-Israeli problem is a cause of great concern. Since the initiative of King Hussein of Jordan broke down there has not been another, other than the agreement at Camp David some time ago, which the United States may think fit to revive. I share my hon. Friend's concern.

Mr. Maclennan: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 27 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Maclennan: Following the Prime Minister's decision to wipe out those local authorities with whose policies she disagrees, and the failure of the Leader of the Opposition to curb the cancerous spread of fundamentalist extremism within the Labour party, will she seek to protect local democracy in Britain by trusting the people and introducing a fair and proportional voting system?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I note what the hon. Gentleman says about, in effect, the GLC, and I note that his constituency is about as far from London as it could possibly be.

Mr. McQuarrie: In the course of my right hon. Friend's busy day, will she take time to read the national press about the shambles in the Labour party——

Mr. Speaker: Order. That might just about have to do with Prime Ministerial responsibility.

Mr. McQuarrie: Will my right hon. Friend find time to read the national press, where she will find some very interesting information about the Labour party, which illustrates clearly the danger that this country would face if we had a Labour Government—an unlikely event—with a Labour Prime Minister who was not in control of his own party?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend's analysis, but I am sure he will understand when I say that I have more important things to do than to read those reports.

Mr. Foot: Should not the Prime Minister and the country as a whole be deeply concerned about the frustration and abandonment of the international treaties stopping the testing of nuclear weapons? What action do the Government intend to take immediately to try to restore the effectiveness of those treaties, bearing in mind that we are treaty bound to try to ensure that such a system is re-established, or is this just another matter on which she prefers to take instructions from the President of the United States?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. But the right hon. Gentleman is correct to say that the comprehensive test ban treaty negotiations are not proceeding at any pace at all. They have come up against difficulties in verification. There have recently been proposals about offers to discuss verification, with a view to American ratification of the peaceful nuclear explosive treaty and the threshold test ban treaty. But those included particular aspects of verification depending upon some of the latest discoveries and upon new technical forms of verification which have recently been made possible.

Totnes

Mr. Steen: asked the Prime Minister if she will pay an official visit to Totnes.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Steen: When the Prime Minister does visit Totnes, will she ensure that she visits the Waterside development, where she will see that derelict warehouses have been renovated to a high standard thanks to a local entrepreneur with a great sense of civic pride and thanks to local people with a sense of community and conservation? If that sense of civic pride were transferred to inner city neighbourhoods, might it not go a long way towards restoring morale and be far more effective than pumping yet more public money into the inner cities?

The Prime Minister: I know of that scheme and I agree with my hon. Friend's analysis. It is an excellent scheme that has been led by the private sector, helped by a certain amount of public money and pursued with the total dedication of the local community. I agree that such a scheme would go a long way towards helping the problems of inner cities. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have read with the greatest interest the Chief Rabbi's report on inner cities, and will have agreed with most of the things that he said.

Dr. Owen: Now that, after the Budget, the Gallup poll has shown—[HON. MEMBERS: "Totnes."] I am not going to speak in the House, Mr speaker, against a constant barrage—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has as much right to be heard as have other right hon. and hon. Members.

Hon. Members: Totnes.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman's question is, I hope, related to Totnes.

Dr. Owen: Now that the Gallup poll following the Budget has confirmed that the SDP/Liberal alliance is in the lead—a situation that has already been confirmed by the electors of Totnes, who have chosen the SDP/Liberal alliance to control Devon county council—is it not clear that the people of this country will not be so easily bribed, and are more interested in an economic recovery and in getting people back to work than in seeing 1p being taken off the standard rate of tax?

The Prime Minister: I think I am right in saying that the rates have gone up in that area as a result of alliance control.

Mr. Lilley: Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the opinion poll—doubtless influenced by the electors of Totnes—which shows that 80 per cent. of the population supported the decision to cut the rate of income tax by 1p?

The Prime Minister: I take note of that. This Government's achievements have been made, not by twisting and turning with every opinion poll, but by carrying out with persistence and perseverance the policies upon which we were elected.

Engagements

Mr. Fisher: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 27 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Fisher: What advice can the Prime Minister give to her party's candidate in the Fulham by-election to help him when addressing the 30 per cent. of the electorate who are the private tenants of absentee landlords? Why cannot private tenants have the same right to buy as council tenants?

The Prime Minister: It is not the Government's job to give away private property—[Interruption.] I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman approves of the sale of council houses, but it is not possible, under totally different circumstances, to deprive private citizens of their freedoms.

Business of the House

Mr. Neil Kinnock: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for the week after the Easter recess?

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): The business for the first week after the Adjournment will be as follows:
TUESDAY 8 APRIL—Remaining stages of the Dockyard Services Bill.
WEDNESDAY 9 APRIL—Progress on remaining stages of the Airports Bill.
THURSDAY 10 APRIL—Until about seven o'clock, completion of remaining stages of the Airports Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Armed Forces Bill.
FRIDAY 11 APRIL—Private Members' Bills.

Mr. Kinnock: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He will recall that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry assured the House on Tuesday that no further decisions affecting BL would be taken during the Easter recess. Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that before any further moves are made there will be a full debate as speedily as possible after the recess so that hon. Members in all parts of the House can make their opinions known on the issue, which is critical for the regions and for the whole economy?
Last week I asked the right hon. Gentleman for a foreign affairs debate to be held immediately after the recess. That has become more pressing because of the clash between units of the American sixth fleet and Libya and the decision by President Reagan to send $20 million worth of support as a back-door way of financing the terrorist contest on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. Can the right hon. Gentleman assure me that a foreign affairs debate will be held shortly after the recess so that we can take those and other matters into account?
Will the right hon. Gentleman also arrange, soon after the recess, a debate on the Government's attitude to the introduction of a poll tax, which the Prime Minister favours, especially in view of the evidence from the Institute of Local Government Studies that in an average inner London borough such as Hammersmith and Fulham the average rate bill of £277 per head would rise under a poll tax to £510 per head—an 84 per cent. increase?

Hon. Members: Those figures are wrong.

Mr. Biffen: There is a mild element of disagreement about the right hon. Gentleman's final remark. A Green Paper has been issued on that topic. Through the usual channels we can consider when it would be appropriate to proceed to a debate.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have conveyed my sympathy about having a foreign affairs debate reasonably soon. Perhaps through the usual channels we can consider the timing of it. The right hon. Gentleman is right that the motion for such a debate should be drawn in such terms as to enable the widest possible consideration of the many topics which excite public concern.
I cannot helpfully add to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has already said about the appropriateness of a debate on BL once discussions are concluded, but I take account of what the right hon. Gentleman says.

Mr. Michael Latham: Since the Committee stage of the Building Societies Bill finished at the end of February, when may we expect its Report stage? Before then, will my right hon. Friend ask the Economic Secretary to continue the excellent procedure which he adopted in Committee of producing detailed amendments and proposals as early as possible so that they can be discussed?

Mr. Biffen: I shall certainly pass my hon. Friend's comments to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary. They will be much appreciated. My hon. Friend will have noticed that the business for the first week back signals our desire that a number of Bills be passed to the other place. My hon. Friend should view the prospects of the Building Societies Bill in that way.

Mr. Roland Boyes: Is the Leader of the House aware that the independent review body has determined in favour of the National Coal Board's plans for the Hawthorn complex in the north-east? The community will be greatly affected by the decision with the loss of 300 jobs, and the unemployment level will be at about 33 per cent.
Is the Leader of the House aware that the decisions on the Bates colliery and the Horden colliery and the recent decision on the Eppleton colliery mean that people see the independent review body as a charade. The last drop of credibility has finally gone down the drain. However, there is one opportunity left for recovery. The National Coal Board has yet to make its final decision. Will the right hon. Gentleman give me a guarantee that the Government will lean on the NCB to save vital jobs in my constituency?

Mr. Biffen: I am not sure that I am the most natural leaner in the Government. However, I will pass the hon. Gentleman's anxieties to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy.

Mr. Richard Alexander: Has my right hon. Friend had time to consider the findings of the report of the Select Committee on the Environment in which considerable doubts were cast on the suitability of present methods of disposing of intermediate and low-level nuclear waste? In view of the considerable research that went into that report, will my right hon. Friend agree to defer the laying of the special development order, especially as it concerns Fulbeck which is near my constituency, until the full recommendations of the report have been investigated and debated in the House?

Mr. Biffen: I refer my hon. Friend to the remarks I made in the recess Adjournment motion debate. What was said then was said with measured tones, and I have nothing to add to it.

Mr. Simon Hughes: The one notable omission from the business of the House on our return is the Second Reading of the Shops Bill.
On Tuesday the Leader of the House said that he considered that people earn their rest over Easter—he was referring to hon. Members. Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the Government will reconsider their present position on de-restricted Sunday trading? Will he ensure that when we come back he will say that, having thought about it, he and the Patronage Secretary will allow their colleagues to vote on the matter


as a matter of conscience and not insist, as he has so far, that there is a Government three-line or two-line Whip on the legisation?

Mr. Biffen: I am happy to say that conscience is entirely the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary. That puts him in a uniquely capable position for holding that responsibility. As to any future announcement on the Second Reading of the Shops Bill, it will proceed in the natural manner.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend note that I speak as a non-smoker, but I call for an open debate on taxation policy relating to smoking. People have a right to choose to smoke, although they know of the hazards to their health in so doing. Will he take special note of the pressure of the Liberal and Labour parties to increase taxation on smokers and to deprive people of smoking in all sorts of places where it is not unreasonable to do so? Provision has been made for nonsmoking areas. If such provision is made for the comfort of non-smokers, is it not appropriate that proper account should be taken of people's right to smoke if they wish to do so?

Mr. Biffen: I am certain my hon. Friend is right to imply that the recent Budget changes have a significant impact on the tobacco industry and those it employs. I suggest that the most appropriate circumstances for such a debate will be on the relevant clause of the Finance Bill, although it is not appropriate for me to tell him which clauses will be taken upstairs and which downstairs. I think that the matters to which he referred make the relevant clause a candidate for consideration downstairs.

Mr. John McWilliam: Will the Leader of the House tell us why he chose to list the Dockyard Services Bill for its Report stage on the Tuesday we come back, given that the Public Accounts Committee has held an investigation into the royal naval dockyards and the fact that significant documents for our consideration of the Bill will not be available until the Monday following the date listed? The PAC's report will not be available until about 22 April. Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Secretary of State for Defence what his hurry was, and what he was trying to hide?

Mr. Biffen: It is a question of neither hurry nor hide but of a generous and liberal interpretation of what might be for the best convenience of the House, with the business and the whipping that has developed on the first day back. The hon. Gentleman advises delay and mentions documents dated 22 April, but it is unrealistic to think in terms of holding back the legislation that far, bearing in mind the fact that its passage in another place is still to follow.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: Has my right hon. Friend seen on the Order Paper early-day motion 538?
[That this House calls upon the Government to seek to amend the Shops Bill [Lords] so as to preserve the special character of Sunday and to have regard for the principles and conscience of those who would be affected by the total deregulation of Sunday trading.]
The motion has been signed by nearly 70 of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and opposes the Government's intention totally to deregulate Sunday trading. Is he aware that, if the Government thought that they had problems with their Back-Benchers over Westland and Land Rover, he ain't

seen nothing yet? Will he consider that the best way in which the Government might honourably get themselves off the hook is by granting their own Members a free vote?

Mr. Biffen: I thought it generous of my hon. Friend, having used such military language, to end with a request that he knows perfectly well I cannot grant but can be granted only by my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary.

Mr. Nicholas Brown: In view of the considerable anxieties that have been expressed in the Chamber in the past week about the placement of the AOR lead vessel contract, will the Leader of the House find time for us to debate that matter before the final decision is made? Will he consider having a debate about the principle of privatised warship yards having to compete with subsidised state-owned industry?

Mr. Biffen: If eloquence could secure the placing of the order for that ship, the contribution by the hon. Gentleman the other evening would have secured it for the north-east——

Mr. Jack Straw: Give it to him, then.

Mr. Biffen: Alas, I am a creature of market forces. Of course, the point that the hon. Gentleman made about the parliamentary handling of the business will be borne in mind, but I cannot hold out very much hope.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: Would it not be helpful if, before the Fulham by-election, the House had a full debate on the chronic state of the Labour party?

Mr. Biffen: There are some things that cannot even be improved by debate.

Mr. Max Madden: Did the Leader of the House hear the exchanges during Prime Minister's Question Time about the important negotiations on the renewal of the multi-fibre arrangement, and the Prime Minister's confirmation of the importance of those negotiations for the textile and clothing industry? Can the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that a statement will be made in the week when we return updating hon. Members on the current state of the negotiations?

Mr. Biffen: I recognise, as all the House will, the importance of the MFA discussions, and I shall certainly refer to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry the hon. Gentleman's request.

Mr. David Sumberg: Has my right hon. Friend noted recent reports that British Airways is to replace air hostesses with northern accents, based in Manchester, with air hostesses from London? When can the House have an opportunity to debate this blatant example of regional discrimination so that we can make it clear that if BA is privatised my constituents from the north will have an equal chance to apply for shares?

Mr. Biffen: I was not aware of that quite breathtaking development. I agree that if we are to have endless debates, which I fear we will, from time to time we need a little break into reality. What my hon. Friend suggests is one of the more cheerful aspects of regional policy.

Mr. Doug Hoyle: Has the Leader of the House taken time to look at early-day motions 204 and 217 about speech therapists which are signed by hon. Members on both sides of the House?
[That this House notes with concern that speech therapists, members of a highly-skilled caring profession, discharging a wide range of responsibilities, are underpaid in comparison with other National Health Service professionals doing work of equal value; notes also that speech therapy is traditionally a female profession; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to provide sufficient funds to enable speech therapists' salary levels to be increased so that speech therapists receive equal pay for work of equal value.]
[That this House expresses its appreciation of the valuable work performed by speech therapists; and, in expressing its concern that decreasing comparative salary levels will dissuade the ablest of individuals from entering this profession, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to ensure that speech therapists are remunerated at a level equal to that of other graduate specialists within the National Health Service.]
They draw attention to the very low pay and conditions of those highly qualified people and their effect on recruitment, not only in my constituency but in all constituencies. I know that this matter was drawn to the attention of the Leader of the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Mr. Silkin) during the debate on the Easter recess motion. Will the Leader of the House press the Secretary of State for Social Services to make an early statement to the House after the Easter recess?

Mr. Biffen: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has referred to the contribution made by his right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Mr. Silkin). I shall certainly refer to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services the fact that there is interest in a statement being made.

Mr. Tony Baldry: As everyone has agreed that the present regulations on Sunday trading are ridiculous, is not the burden of proof on those who are opposed to total deregulation to make suggestions which are sensible, workable and enforceable? Therefore, will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is plenty of time on Second Reading of the Shops Bill to give them an opportunity to put those suggestions to the House? In the absence of such suggestions, is not the only logical and intellectual conclusion that total deregulation is the only way forward?

Mr. Biffen: I could answer that question only by heightening controversy when I am required to pretend that it hardly exists.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is the Leader of the House aware that when the PAC examined in private session the subject of dockyards and the privatisation of dockyards there were clearly matters raised which would be of importance during the debate which is to take place a week on Tuesday? In so far as it is probable that the PAC would wish to publish much of the evidence taken in private session without sidelining, why cannot the debate be delayed to ensure that the maximum possible information is made available to hon. Members?

Mr. Biffen: I think that I dealt with that issue in my response to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr.

McWilliam). I shall bear in mind the hon. Gentleman's comments in the context of the Bill eventually being considered in another place and with the possibilty of its being reconsidered in the House.

Mr. Michael Fallon: May we have an early debate on industrial relations in the newspaper industry so that the Labour party may end its hypocritical, silence over the way in which Mr. Maxwell appears to run his newspapers?

Mr. Biffen: I am not sure about the silence being hypocritical but it is definitely spasmodic. At the moment, no provision has been made for such a debate, but I agree that it must be a lively candidate.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Social Services to give some thought during the recess to making the lot of the 2,500 partially sighted children in this country better rather than worse by the proposed changes in the supply of their specialised spectacles and lenses? The proposed changes are causing great distress to their families and teachers. It is a small group of people. The matter should not be left to a voucher system because that will not cover the cost of their necessarily specialised equipment.

Mr. Biffen: I shall certainly draw that point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services.

Mr. Peter Lilley (St. Albans): May I support the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) for an early debate on industrial relations in the newspaper industry? Surely the House should have an opportunity to consider the strange fact that the dispute in Wapping has led to a threat to free speech in the shape of the refusal of the Labour party to have any dealings with Mr. Murdoch, whereas the dispute in Glasgow has led to no such action? Should we not have the opportunity to investigate whether that is because of any financial relationship between Mr. Maxwell and the Labour party?

Mr. Biffen: The attractiveness of the debate increases every moment, and it is already being outlined as going much wider than the newspapers of Mr. Rupert Murdoch. I am sure that if we cannot contrive to find time for such a debate, particularly over the next few days and during the period of the Fulham by-election, the Labour party will take an early opportunity to make an explicit statement about where it stands on the two newspaper actions by the two newspaper tycoons.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: Is the Leader of the House aware that concern about the auxiliary oil replenishment vessel order is felt not only in Tyneside but stretches to Yorkshire, where concern is felt among component suppliers, such as those in my constituency?
May I refer the Leader of the House to the business on the Thursday evening? Why are the Government so sensitive that they feel that they must gag the House, as they used their majority to gag the Select Committee when it looked at the terms and conditions of employment in the armed forces? Why are we to have a debate on Thursday night, less than 24 hours after the publication of the Select Committee's report? Is it not an insult to the House to expect it to be able to read that report and put down appropriate amendments, which by then will all be starred


amendments, for the debate on Thursday? It is a deplorable way to treat the House. It is typical of the Government's arrogance and of the way in which they are using their majority.

Mr. Biffen: There is no question of gag or censorship in what is being proposed. What has been proposed is perfectly reasonable and is consistent with precedent. I have no doubt that on the Floor of the House there will be a lively debate between those who wish to defend the bravery and integrity of the Ulster Defence Regiment and those who wish to disparage it.

Mr. Eric Forth (Mid-Worcestershire): As a self-confessed creature of market forces, will my right hon. Friend reaffirm his faith and that of the Government in free trade and the free movement of not only goods and services but capital as the great engine of economic prosperity? If that is the position, does my right hon. Friend feel that it is time that the House debated at a very early stage the reaffirmation of our faith in the free movement of goods, capital and services by extensive United Kingdom investment in the United States? Does he not believe that the House should be given the opportunity to reaffirm that prosperity can come yet again from extensive American investment, when the Americans believe it to be right and justified, in growth points of British industry?

Mr. Biffen: Perhaps I should define my position as a traditional high Tory with a fastidious leaning towards market forces. I am the kind of Tory who will be very much influenced by the persuasive speech that my hon. Friend has just made, but I think that it has to stand alone and unique and must not be cluttered up by more general debate.

Mrs. Ann Clwyd: Will the Leader of the House bring to the attention of the relevant Ministers the fact that the abolition of the Greater London council and the metropolitan counties will put at risk the funding of dozens of citizens advice bureaux throughout the country, bureaux which last year dealt with 300,000 inquiries about fuel, mainly fuel poverty, that with the privatisation of the gas industry the rights of the consumer councils will be diminished and that between the two the needs and the rights of consumers are being eroded further by the Government?

Mr. Biffen: I take account of what the hon. Lady says, but I do not think that she will be entirely surprised if I have a certain agnosticism about what she implies. However, I shall most certainly refer the matter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, because it relates to serious consumer issues.

Mr. Peter Bruinvels: When shall we have an additional follow-up debate on local government so that we may look again at rates and propaganda, in particular, in Leicester, where, despite an additional £300,000 having been given to the city of Leicester, it has still levied an 80 per cent. rates rise? To try to get round the propaganda rules, the city of Leicester has set up its own publicity company to ensure that it can still spend more than £300,000 of ratepayers' money each year.
Will my right hon. Friend set a lead for the rest of the country by stating that it will be the intention of the House not to sit on 23 July, when Prince Andrew marries Miss Sarah Ferguson?

Mr. Biffen: For the headline of this afternoon or this morning, I congratulate my hon. Friend. All I can say is that that particular privilege is not within my gift. However, I take account of his concern. As he would rightly observe, we have far fewer public holidays than do most countries on the continent of Europe. This provides a chance to redress the imbalance.
As to the question of local authority behaviour and the use of the rates, my hon. Friend took part—I think formidably and constructively—in our debate earlier this week. I cannot guarantee very much shortly after our return. However, as the Leader of the Opposition has reminded us, a debate on the Green Paper will be required at some point.

Mr. John Ryman: The Leader of the House mentioned the Fulham by-election. He will probably not remember, because he was in his pram at the time, that the last time that the Labour party fought a by-election in Fulham was when Edith Summerskill kicked out the Tories in the 1938 by-election and gained a massive majority. That was the last time that Labour won the seat from the Tories in Fulham. No doubt that event will be repeated when we fight the Fulham by-election in about two weeks' time.
What I really want to ask the Leader of the House is this. He has no doubt held many interesting conversations with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy on the vexed question of the colliery review procedure. I have asked him about this on several occasions. Only today, one of my hon. Friends asked him a further question about it. The Leader of the House says that he speaks for the Secretary of State for Energy on this procedure. What do the Government intend to do about it? Do they intend to maintain the existing machinery in reference to pit closures, or is it to be dismantled or amended? What steps are the Government taking? The procedure is falling wholly into disrepute. The National Coal Board does not pay any attention to the recommendations, and the Leader of the House guffaws, smirks and simpers. However, this is a very serious matter for the coal miners, who are affected by a ferocious programme of pit closures What is the Government's position, briefly?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman very generously draws attention to the gap in our ages, which I acknowledge. I should only like to plead in self-defence that there is no corresponding gap in maturity. As to the independent review body, only my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy can state the Government's policy on this matter. I shall represent to him the concern, which I know extends beyond the hon. Gentleman, that a statement should be made on this matter.

Mr. William Cash: In relation to the next allotted day for the alliance, does my right hon. Friend, whose Tory credentials are impeccable, agree, in the light of the answer that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth), after reading the recently published book by the leader of the Social Democratic Party, "A United Kingdom", that he pinched for one of his chapters the title "Trust the People", a phrase of Lord Randolph Churchill, and that many of the policies contained in the book could easily have been written by a five year old?

Mr. Biffen: I am not sure how that relates to Lord Randolph Churchill. The fascinating contribution of the


right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) is a clear indication that he is paving the way to a Labour party which is bereft of Militant, so that the real challenge from the Left in this country will come from an increasingly united alliance and Labour party.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall call those hon. Members who have been standing, but we must finish these questions at 11 o'clock, so may we have questions about business next week and not about the Fulham by-election or about books that we might read during the recess?

Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Is the Leader of the House aware that most people in this country view with abhorrence President Reagan's support of terrorism in Nicaragua and Angola and American aggression in the Mediterranean? Will he therefore give a more positive response to the request of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that, as a matter of urgency, there should be a foreign policy debate in the House?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman is entitled to observe that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) takes a fairly acerbic view of the American action in Libya and that in that he is joined by the Leader of the Opposition. That is a reasonable political observation. It underlines the variety and the interest that there will be in a foreign affairs debate. I have said that this matter will be considered through the usual channels, and so it shall.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: To support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), will the right hon. Gentleman draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to early-day motion 553, which has been signed by 46 hon. Members, and early-day motion 619, which has been signed by 49 hon. Members?
[That this House recognises the need to achieve a peaceful solution to the problems of Central America; is aware of the importance of the recently signed Carablleda Declaration calling on the end to all foreign aid to irregular forces operating in Central America, the progressive elimination of all foreign forces in the region and the reduction of arms acquisitions; is further aware of the repeated calls of the Contadora countries to cease United States funding of the Contras and of the well-documented, appalling human rights violations by the Contras; calls on the United States Congress to reject President Reagan's request for increased aid, including military aid, to the Contras; calls on the United Kingdom Government to join with other European Economic Community countries to oppose publicly the request for military and other aid; and calls on the United States Administration to stop all efforts designed to bring down the Nicaraguan Government and to resume direct bilateral talks with the Nicaraguan Government which have been unilaterally suspended by the United States of America.]
[That this House is alarmed at the recent revelation of activity by the Contras against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua; is appalled that on 25th January 1985 in Waslala, Zelaya, a group of civilian travellers and children were ambushed on their way to meet President Ortega; is horrified that on 29th June 1984, Paco Sivilla, a teacher from Brownback, was hunted by a group of Contras and his ears, tongue and private parts cut off before he was brutally murdered; is shocked that in July 1984 Adam Flores, a 70-year-old man, was murdered by a force of 70 Contras; further believes that these are a few examples of the most appalling murders by Contra forces against the people of Nicaragua; believes that President Reagan's attempts to send a further $100 million in aid to the Contras can only continue the war and result in further murders of the Nicaraguan people; and accordingly demands that Her Majesty's Government put all possible pressure on President Reagan to cease all support for the Contras and respect the territorial integrity and peaceful wishes of the people of Nicaragua.]
They concern United States support for Contra violence in South America. Will the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary tell the United States that its policies in central America are leading to death, to a continuation of murder and maiming of people and to the invasion of a democratic sovereign country? These matters are important to western Europe and the United Kingdom and should be debated as soon as we return after the Easter recess.

Mr. Biffen: The Leader of the Opposition mentioned Nicaragua as one of the area of conflict that he should like to see included in a foreign affairs debate. I am sure that the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) has taken note of that comment. He may have noted that on Wednesday 9 April, the day on which we return, Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions are at the top of the list.

Dr. Norman A. Godman: If I heard the Leader of the House correctly, he said that we shall consider the remaining stages of the Armed Forces bill on Thursday of the week in which we return. As a member of the Standing Committee on the Bill, I think I am right in saying that the report of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill will be published on the Wednesday. In view of the disquiet surrounding the chairmanship and deliberations of that Committee, would it not have been more fair and reasonable to allow the House time to debate the report before scrutinising the Bill?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman is a fair controversialist. If from his position here he talks of "disquiet" about the conduct of the Chair, he should either make it clear that he is trying to censure the Chair or accept that the decisions at which the Chair arrived were in order. I take note of what the hon. Gentleman said about the Committee's report being followed immediately by consideration of the remaining stages of the Bill. I think that the situation is manageable.

Honourable Members (Access to House)

Mr. David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. At the beginning of each Parliament, resolutions are passed on free and easy access to the House. When I arrived today at Carriage Gate, I was told by a policeman that I should wait because the Prime Minister's car was due to arrive. If a car—whether the Prime Minister's or any other person's—was due to arrive immediately, I would hardly need the caution of a policeman. Because the policeman was so insistent that I should wait, I did so; but the Prime Minister's car did not arrive for a good one minute. I had said to the policeman that Question Time was due to begin, but it made no impression on him. May I take it that the Prime Minister is given such special preferential treatment that hon. Members are supposed to wait at Carriage Gate until her car arrives in due course?

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the policeman was looking after the hon. Member's health to ensure that he arrived here safely before Question Time. I shall, of course, look into the matter.

Armed Forces Bill

Mr. John McWilliam: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Further to the answers given by the Leader of the House to my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) and for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on the Armed Forces Bill, we have a problem because we shall not be able to draft amendments to the Bill in the light of the Select Committee's report until less than 24 hours before we debate the Bill. Will you accept amendments much later than normal?

Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Member. I had already picked up that message in the earlier exchanges. I shall certainly do that.

BILL PRESENTED

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (AMENDMENT)

Mrs. Lynda Chalker, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Hurd, Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Michael Jopling, Mr. Secretary Ridley, Mr. Secretary Baker, Mr. Kenneth Clarke, Mr. Secretary Channon and Mr. Attorney-General, presented a Bill to amend the European Communities Act 1972 so as to include in the definition of "the Treaties" and "the Community Treaties" certain provisions of the Single European Act signed at Luxembourg and The Hague on 17 and 28 February 1986 and extend certain provisions relating to the European Court to any court attached thereto; and to amend references to the Assembly of the European Communities and approve the Single European Act: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Tuesday 8 April and to be printed. [Bill 126.]

PETITIONS

Social Security

Mr. William McKelvey: I seek leave to present a petition on behalf of 5,000 of my constituents. It explains that legislation based on the "Reform of Social Security—Progamme for Action" White Paper would be extremely detrimental to many of the poor, not only in Ayrshire but in the United Kingdom. The good and sensible people of Ayrshire have appended their names to the petition in the hope that the House will take note of the request that the Social Security Bill should not go forward to Third Reading.

To lie upon the Table.

Mr. Ernie Ross: I seek leave to present a petition, with which I wish to be associated, on behalf of the elderly people of Dundee who are concerned at the review of the social security system outlined in the Fowler review paper. There are 150,000 elderly persons in Scotland who receive supplementary benefit and a further 75,000 who do not claim supplementary benefit. Rather than seek to review the supplementary benefit system to cut benefits, these elderly people in Dundee would be much better off if the Secretary of State for Social Security carried out a review to ensure that the 75,000 people entitled to claim supplementary benefit receive it and to ensure that benefits are increased. I am sure that hon. Members agree. On behalf of those people, I ask the Minister not to proceed with the review.

To lie upon the Table.

Police Complaints Authority

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Donald Thompson.]

Mr. Speaker: I draw the attention of the House to the fact that this debate started five minutes later than I had hoped. The first debate will therefore have to end shortly after 11.30 am. I hope that we shall make up time later in the other debates.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: I preface my comments in this now shortened debate by saying that it is with considerable regret that I have to raise the issue of the police complaints procedure and specifically as it applies to the inquiry into the events surrounding the visit by the former Home Secretary to Manchester university at the beginning of March last year.
The Minister of State will be aware that in the past 12 months I and my colleagues have expressed our concern at those events. On 14 March 1985 my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) asked for an independent public inquiry into the actions of the police. The Minister responded by saying that he felt that the existing complaints procedure was perfectly satisfactory. Since then, the report of the independent inquiry set up by Manchester—the so-called Platts-Mills inquiry—has been published. The inquiry made serious allegations to which there has not been, to date, a proper answer from any of the authorities.
I am grateful for the fact that The Guardian has published over the past four days a series of articles which have brought the events up to date and given voice to further extremely serious allegations about events in the area policed by the Greater Manchester police.
The Opposition Front Bench endorses my attempts to seek answers to these serious allegations. I should like to get to the bottom of these allegations to ascertain whether we can restore the concept of justice in an area where many people would claim that it has not been forthcoming. We seek to offer protection to a number of the people who have been involved in these events in the past 12 months.
I do not want this debate to turn into a generalised police-bashing exercise. I am conscious of the fact that, if that happened, the Minister might be forced to take a defensive position. I do not want that. I do not intend to make generalised criticisms of the Greater Manchester police or of the chief constable, but I cannot shirk my responsibility to the area that I represent. Parliament cannot shirk its responsibility, and to that extent I have the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House. There are some serious matters that demand our attention.
I know the Minister well enough, after our contacts on different occasions, to know that he is extremely serious about wanting adequate policing of our cities. I know that he will take my comments seriously, and I say that with a degree of respect in advance of his reply to my speech. I do not think that the House wants anodyne answers, and I do not mean that unkindly. It would not be sufficient simply to refer us back to the existing police complaints procedure, because the allegations that have been made are now too serious simply to palm matters off for a further few months.
Individual policemen have been involved in events of an extremely sinister and serious nature. I am suggesting

that the inquiry that has been established has been reluctant to take action on a number of matters, and some people interpret that as meaning that the inquiry is simply covering up the extremely serious behaviour of the individuals involved. I regret to say that I think that the inquiry to date has been incompetent in the prosecution of its task. In making that charge, I must tell the Minister that the whole of the complaints procedure is now also on trial.
This is the first inquiry under the new procedures, and is almost certainly one of the most important inquiries with which the procedures will have to deal for some considerable time. To an extent, I hope we can all accept that, whatever our different views on the matter, this is a matter of fundamental importance both to policing specifically and to the control that society exercises over that policing.
I do not want to dwell upon the events of 1 March last year, because, although they are still important, they have been out-distanced by subsequent events, and specifically they have been out-distanced by what has happened to at least two of the students involved. Over the past year they have suffered what The Guardian has described as a "systematic campaign of intimidation". They have been harassed and attacked. It can only be accepted that the harassment and attacks have been systematic and have led to the students living in a climate of fear. They have suffered appallingly over that period. It is our duty and that of the police to protect society and individuals against such fear. Manifestly, that has not happened in this case.
I should like to refer specifically to Sarah Hollis. I should not have referred to Sarah Hollis had her circumstances not been widely reported already in the press. She has suffered considerable anxiety, fear and brutal attacks over the past 12 months. She was publicly injured at the time of the former Home Secretary's visit to Manchester university and she made a formal complaint to her Member of Parliament at that time.
That was followed by what can only be described as the persecution of Sarah. Specifically, she was followed by marked police vehicles, and she claimed to have received anonymous telephone calls at different times of the day and night. While riding her bicycle, she was stopped by motorcycle policemen for alleged offences. Most important, her house was burgled in June. Various items were taken, including two witness statements about the former Home Secretary's visit and a number of her membership cards of various quasi-political organisations, for example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Subsequent to that burglary, Sarah visited the then head of the police team inquiring into this matter, Deputy Chief Constable Reddington, of the Somerset and Avon police force. The Platts-Mills inquiry stated on the basis of Sarah Hollis's evidence:
In the presence of Mr. Reddington, a witness statement was taken from her as to the events of 1 March, and the injuries from which she had suffered. This was done by Detective Inspector Edwards. On completion of the witness statement, Mr. Reddington indicated that he was aware that Sarah Hollis had other matters to raise. She mentioned the harassment and the burglary. Mr. Reddington began to shout at her, asking whether she was alleging that it was police officers who had done this. Not surprisingly she burst into tears and left the room.
Inspector Edwards later confided to her that this was necessary to establish whether she was telling the truth about the burglary.
That alleged behaviour by the head of the inquiry is not suitable or fitting for an independent inquiry, and is


unacceptable by any standards. Sarah subsequently went into hiding, with the result that when she came out of hiding the harassment continued. Finally, in January of this year, she was attacked and punched, with led to her receiving a severely injured eye. She believes that the person who attacked her was the man who had previously threatened her, and she believes that that man is a policeman.
Following that, Sarah withdrew all co-operation from the various inquiries taking place. It might be possible to argue that as Sarah has twice now withdrawn her co-operation, she is an unreliable witness. I would suggest that it is far more plausible to argue that she is a very frightened young woman.
I should now like to consider the case of Mr. Steven Shaw, another of those involved in the former Home Secretary's visit to Manchester. Steven spoke at a meeting shortly after the former Home Secretary's visit which discussed non-co-operation with the police inquiry and advocated co-operation with an inquiry set up by the police monitoring unit of the city of Manchester. Subsequently, Steven's thesis was stolen. He informed his professor at the university and Mr. Steve Wright of the police monitoring unit of the theft. However, he did not inform the police. Several days later he was picked up for speeding and taken to Longsight police station, where he was greeted by the desk sergeant who said that he, Steven, was the chap making allegations about his thesis.
It is obviously very serious for me to suggest that the police somehow knew about the thesis, as Steven had not told them about it. Steven suffered a horrific beating at Bootle street police station and was hospitalised. He did not co-operate with Somerset and Avon inquiry until earlier this year. Shortly after co-operating with that inquiry, Steven received another severe beating, with the result that he again had to spend some time in hospital. He was badly injured and no doubt the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), Mr. Shaw's Member of Parliament, will make some comments about that.
There have been allegations that the police used unmarked police cars, but the registration numbers of the cars clearly showed that they were registered with the police and were used for surveillance. There is a serious allegation that the burglary at Sarah Hollis's flat was, to some extent, organised by the police. Mr. Frank Logan, who was convicted of that burglary, alleges, and has sworn an affidavit to this effect, that the police put it into his mind that he should rob that flat. Mr. Logan also said that at no time did he or his accomplice take any papers from Sarah's flat. That is a clear implication that someone else also entered Sarah Hollis's flat at the same time to obtain the witness statements.
The Avon and Somerset inquiry, as I have said, has started off on the wrong foot and has generated no confidence whatsoever. There is a degree of scepticism among the students involved, which is vindicated to the extent that when Frank Logan was questioned by Inspector Edwards about the burglary at Sarah Hollis's flat he was asked whether students had put him up to the burglary. The Guardian made the point that when Steven Shaw was beaten, the Somerset and Avon police were asked to look into the matter, and a senior officer from Avon and

Somerset police told a solicitor recently that he was getting nowhere because he could not find a motive for the attack on Steven Shaw.
Statements of events at and around the time of the Home Secretary's visit were handed over by the independent inquiry to the prosecution, but not to the defence. That is an extremely serious charge of lack of impartiality, and has itself resulted in a complaint to the independent inquiry.
To date there have been no charges, no convictions and no obvious sense of urgency in relation to the attacks on witnesses. I have already commented on the relationship of Deputy Chief Constable Reddington with Sarah Hollis. In July last year he told The Guardian:
We have not received any complaints about policemen persecuting students.
As that was some months after he interviewed Sarah Hollis, that comment belies the true events.

Mr. Chris Smith: Does my hon. Friend recall the wide disquiet in recent months about incidents in my constituency, including the assault on five youngsters by police officers in Holloway? Does he agree that that clearly shows the need for a fully independent system to investigate complaints about the police?

Mr. Lloyd: I heartily endorse that view. I understand that my hon. Friend's constituents were invited to meet the Home Secretary.
In a letter to The Guardian today, Sarah Hollis concludes:
When I read the article on Monday I was extremely frightened for my own safety as a consequence of its publication.
Does the Minister agree that the same protection should be offered to Sarah Hollis and that he or his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary should agree to meet her?
I shall put a number of questions to the Minister formally at a later stage. Clearly the issues that have been raised are of the utmost importance. So far there have been no charges. We expect charges to be made, because the police do not have to wait until the independent inquiry is concluded. It is a matter of grave concern that the assaults on witnesses seem to have received inadequate attention from the police, who seem not to have pursued their inquiries with any diligence, leading not just to a certain cynicism among those involved, but to widespread concern that there is an attempt to cover up the truth. Parliament cannot allow such an attempt to succeed.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): As we are behind schedule, I hope that hon. Members will be brief so that we can make up the lost time.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd). It is typical of his courtesy and consideration that he informed me that he would be seeking to raise this matter today. I am grateful to him because one of the principal witnesses whom he mentioned is a constituent of mine.
I am second to no one in my admiration for the police forces of this country, who have to do a difficult, dangerous and occasionally dirty job, but that is not to assert that every officer necessarily acts with impeccable propriety on every occasion. There may be bad eggs in any


profession or occupation. It causes me deep concern and disquiet that my constituent, having been invited for interview at a police station in Manchester, where he was interviewed for five hours, was stripped and searched and, he claims, assaulted. I understand that no doctor was present. Certainly my constituent had to be taken to hospital, where internal rupture necessitated two operations.
Subsequently, my constituent was interviewed at his home in my constituency by the Avon and Somerset police for 17 hours, involving the preparation of a 58-page statement. He was advised to return to Manchester to check some statements with witnesses, and he did so. On the second day following his return he was attacked on the street outside the place where he was staying by, he claims, two people who assaulted him on the first occasion. His nose was broken, a cigarette end was burnt into his face, he was hit with a bottle, trodden on and punched, necessitating his being taken to hospital for treatment, after which he had to be brought by ambulance to his home in my constituency.
Four days later, the Avon and Somerset police spent a further 10 hours taking statements from my constituent. Since then he has received two death threats—one by telephone and one by letter. I implore my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that the fullest inquiries are carried out into these complaints. I believe that it is as much in the interests of the police forces of our country as of anyone else that the truth of these matters should be discovered.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Giles Shaw): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) for raising this issue and to my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) for his contribution in respect of his constituent. As the House will recognise, the incident at Manchester university is the subject of a major inquiry currently under the auspices of the deputy chief constable of the South Wales police force and supervised by the Police Complaints Authority. I shall briefly put on record the chronology of events.
The incident took place on 1 March 1985. The first complaints were received by the chief constable of Greater Manchester in the early days of that month and the deputy chief constable of Avon and Somerset, Mr. Reddington, was appointed to investigate. He arrived in Manchester to start work on 11 March. As the House knows, the Police Complaints Authority was not established until 29 April, so the initial inquiry was under the previous arrangements. On 5 May a complaint which had only then been made to the Greater Manchester police was referred to the Police Complaints Authority to consider supervision of its investigation. The authority immediately decided to undertake supervision of that complaint and of all others stemming from events at the students union on 1 March.
I understand that 30 individual complaints were lodged formally with the Greater Manchester police about the conduct of police officers involved in the demonstration and that 68 general complaints have been made by members of the public. Statements from witnesses included references to a further 74 incidents which, in the view of the investigating officers, merit examination at the very least as criticisms of police conduct. In other words, 172 complaints or allegations are part of the inquiry for which the Police Complaints Authority is responsible.
So far, 540 civilian witnesses have made statements to the inquiry team. In addition, statements have been taken from 217 police officers and the team has not yet finished interviewing. That means a total of 757 witnesses. The whole inquiry has involved a team of 10 to 12 officers working full time since last March.
I wish to say categorically to the hon. Member for Stretford and to the House that there is no question of dilatoriness or attempted cover-up, but of total commitment to optimise the amount of investigation that must take place to try to reach conclusions on the basis of the broad range of complaints that have been registered. From September 1985, Mr. Reddington took up another post and was replaced as head of the inquiry by Mr. Vickers, deputy chief constable of South Wales.
The hon. Member for Stretford reasonably asks why no conclusion has yet been reached. The fault lies not with the officers or with the Police Complaints Authority, which is supervising the investigation very closely, but with the students who wished to make complaints about police conduct. As the hon. Member for Stretford said, after the incident Manchester city council decided to establish its own inquiry into the events of 1 March. That inquiry was set up under the chairmanship of Mr. Platts-Mills, QC. As I understand it, the students union in Manchester thereupon resolved that no student complainant about the events of 1 March should make a statement to the police investigation until the Platts-Mills inquiry had reported. In other cases, students involved in criminal proceedings declined—as they have every right to do—to give statements for the purpose of the inquiry until the criminal proceedings had been completed.
The result of all that was that, although the inquiry team was able to take statements from about 300 witnesses in the first six months of the investigation, none were from the most important complainants. In effect, the inquiry proceeded with one hand tied firmly behind its back at least until November last year. That was the major component in the significant delay, if delay it be, in the handling of the inquiry.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the serious incidents that have been the subject of allegations in The Guardian and have emerged from the inquiry—the alleged attacks on and harassment of Sarah Hollis and Steven Shaw, who is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet. Here again the inquiry team has been hampered in not being able to take timely statements from those two people.
In Mr. Shaw's case, the inquiry team was initially working on the basis of evidence published in the report of the Platts-Mills inquiry and in the media. As I understand it, Mr. Shaw's solicitor was reluctant to allow him to make any statement to the investigating officers until 22 January 1986. Miss Hollis has still made no statement about her allegations of harassment to the inquiry team, which is thus unable to take its investigation very far forward at present. In order to assist it as far as she is willing, Miss Hollis has indicated that she would allow the team to have access to the evidence that she gave to the Platts-Mills inquiry, to which I have referred. That evidence rests, as I understand it, with the Manchester city council. The head of the inquiry team has twice written to the council seeking access to, in particular, Miss Hollis's evidence, but also to any other evidence relevant to these inquiries.
In addition, the Police Complaints Authority itself has written to the council making the same request. No reply has been received to any of those letters. I must ask the hon. Member for Stretford—for whom I have considerable respect—whether he can facilitate the inquiry and help it to come to a speedier conclusion by encouraging Manchester city council to respond positively to the request made to it, rather than suggesting—as I think he did—that the inquiry is getting nowhere fast and that the reasons must rest fundamentally with the provision of essential evidence.
I have read the letter in The Guardian this morning, in which Miss Hollis gives her views. I have carefully studied recent articles in The Guardian. They contain serious allegations. The allegations will receive the thorough investigation that they so clearly deserve, but that is difficult to achieve in the absence of full assistance from the subjects of the alleged complaints and, in particular, from Miss Hollis.
I note from Miss Hollis's letter published this morning that she regrets the publication without either her knowledge or agreement of matters discussed in confidence with another person. If The Guardian has any new evidence at all on these matters—and some of what has been published appeared some months ago in the Platts-Mills report—it should pass it to the Police Complaints Authority or to the deputy chief constable of South Wales who is leading the investigation. I understand that The Guardian claims that some information has been sent to the authority. I am not sure what it is, and I understand that it has yet to arrive.
The position in this inquiry is far from easy. The inquiry is of the utmost importance and the broadest scope. We intend to ensure that the Police Complaints Authority, with the powers that Parliament has given it, should produce a thorough and full investigation into every aspect of the complaints. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Police Complaints Authority has already been involved in major incidents. There were the inquiries into the shooting of the Shorthouse boy in Birmingham, into the shooting of Mrs. Groce and into the death of Mrs. Jarrett. The authority handled those major complaints in a thoroughly effective and professional manner.
I give the hon. Gentleman the commitment that he wishes me to give. I will personally see to it that the Police Complaints Authority does its job with the effectiveness, thoroughness and probity that Parliament demands of it. However, the hon. Gentleman should understand how difficult that is to achieve in the absence of clear statements of evidence, clear support of the allegations and, above all else, the opportunity to question those most critically involved in the major allegations.
The Police Complaints Authority has been established for less than a year, and I am bound to record that its record under the chairmanship of Sir Cecil Clothier demonstrates its successful determination to serve the public with fairness and dispatch.

Helicopter and Aircraft Noise

Mr. Toby Jessel: I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise the problem of aircraft and helicopter noise. This is of great concern to thousands of my constituents. No one who lacks the experience of living under the noise shadow of a major airport such as Heathrow should ever dream of belittling the impact on those who live nearby. In the hurly-burly of modern life, people long for peace and quiet in their own homes. Aircraft noise can ruin people's quiet enjoyment of their houses and gardens. That is especially true in summer when people are in their gardens or are more likely to open their windows. Aircraft noise interferes with the work of schools, offices, hospitals and, on Sundays, of churches. It can have an impact on private conversations, including telephone conversations, on people's private lives and on their enjoyment of music.
Some people do not mind aircraft noise very much, but to a major and significant proportion it is extremely annoying. Experiments carried out by the consultant psychiatrist at the West Middlesex hospital have proved that it can even lead to mental illness.
People can look to courts of law for protection against other forms of noise nuisance, but in the Civil Aviation Act 1949 Parliament expressly ruled out that protection in the case of aircraft and helicopter noise. That being so, people can do no other than look to the Government and Parliament for that protection against the nuisance of noise which in other cases is enshrined in English law so that people are entitled to expect the quiet enjoyment of their own houses. The Government therefore have a special duty to have regard to the impact of aircraft noise on householders.

Mr. Harry Greenway: All that my hon. Friend says is absolutely right. People in my own constituency suffer from all the annoyances that he has described. Noise induces illnesses other than mental illness. Furthermore, because of the heavy use of Heathrow and the growing use of Northolt airport there is very heavy traffic on the roads. People cannot use the roads effectively and they suffer additional noise pollution from the roads.

Mr. Jessel: That is all true. My hon. Friend has been very active in connection with the environment in Ealing and the noise from aircraft and road traffic.
Unlike airline companies and airport authorities, householders who live under the flight paths cannot afford to employ expensive lobbyists or public relations firms. That, too, means that the Government have a duty to pay additional regard to the views of those hon. Members who represent people living under the flight paths. I hope that the Minister will confirm, on behalf of the Government, that he and the Secretary of State should always keep in the forefront of their minds a distinct and determined resolve to safeguard the interests of those who live below the flight paths and will confirm that those interests will always be upheld by the Government.
Over the years hon. Members with constituencies close to Heathrow have campaigned ceaselessly to curb the curse of aircraft noise. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There is also my hon.


Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground), my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Sir H. Atkins), and my hon. Friends the Members for Epsom and Ewell (Mr. Hamilton), for Windsor and Maidenhead (Dr. Glyn), for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) and for Ealing, North. My late colleague Mr. Martin Stevens, as hon. Member for Fulham, was always assiduous in his efforts not only to contain aircraft noise but to mitigate the terrible road traffic effects along Cromwell road. Cromwell road, which passes through Fulham, is the main radial route between central London and Heathrow airport. It is greatly affected by the growth of traffic that has been generated by the airport.
We have all tried to contain airport traffic and the size of Heathrow, to make aircraft engines quieter and to cut night flights. Several of the hon. Members whom I mentioned are Ministers in other Departments or Whips who, by convention, do not speak on these matters on the Floor of the House. However, they have made their views known behind the scenes consistently and with great force. Together we have had some effect. Aircraft engines are slowly becoming quieter through the certification system and in the 1970s most of the night flights were banned—although the number has started to creep up again, which gives my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes great concern. I hope this will be stopped.
Last year the Government decided, against the advice of their inspector, to refuse planning permission for a fifth terminal at Heathrow. That courageous decision was widely applauded throughout west London and showed that the Government put peace, quiet and the health of the people above commercial interests. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary can confirm that the Government do not intend to waver on that position.
Next, I turn to the helicopter route between Heathrow and Gatwick. The noise of helicopters is unpleasant, whirring and penetrating, and many of my constituents find it thoroughly offensive and irritating. We would be willing to suppress our feelings if that helicopter route were somehow essential to the defence of the nation, or crucial to the fundamental wealth and prosperity of our country, but it is not.
Each year that route would be used by only 90,000 passengers of the 47 million who pass through the southeastern airports of Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted. That is one in 500, and is only about one in 40 even of the annual growth in the number of passengers through airports in the south-east. It is intolerable to suggest that the peace and quiet of tens of thousands of people living, working, enjoying their gardens and going about their daily lives below should be systematically interrupted to save 20 people 20 minutes each. That cannot be allowed. It must be stopped permanently.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: is my hon. Friend aware that that service generates about £24 million for the airlines concerned, and constitutes only 20 per cent. of the helicopter traffic that operates in the area? Does he agree that the prosperous south-east owes much of its prosperity to the existence of sophisticated air transport facilities? Is he aware that my constituents in the

hard-pressed midlands are accepting a motorway in the national interest, and will take a dim view if this national asset were stopped?

Mr. Jessel: There are many motorways in the midlands and the north which do a great deal towards the prosperity of the midlands and the north, and which are an essential part of the infrastructure required to generate employment in the provinces, which all hon. Members wish to see. I do not believe that the helicopter route generates a profit of £24 million. Is that sum a profit or turnover?

Mr. Howarth: The £24 million is revenue—turnover.

Mr. Jessel: In that case the route does not make £24 million in profit, as substantial costs must be involved. The profit must be far less than £24 million. Indeed, I imagine that it is only £1 million or £2 million. It is wholly unreasonable every day to expect tens of thousands of people to endure that horrible noise to generate £1 million or £2 million of profit for an airline. Moreover, I cannot see that it is doing anything whatever for the people of the midlands. On the contrary, it is attracting more activity to the south-east.
The Government must take note of the strong feelings. People will be furious if the Secretary of State fails to hold to the extremely wise, sensible decision that he announced to the House in June 1984, that four months after the opening of the south-west section of the M25, which was to link Heathrow and Gatwick, these helicopter flights would be stopped.
This February my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State together with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State were kind enough to see a delegation led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne and including my hon. Friends the Members for Epsom and Ewell, for Esher, for Woking (Mr. Onslow), for Reigate (Mr. Gardiner) and me, on that matter so that we could put to them our deep concern on behalf of our constituents. My constituents in Hampton and the Hampton Hill area would be affected by the helicopter flight path.
The Secretary of State was acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, as there has recently been a public inquiry. However, it was conducted by a biased body because the Civil Aviation Authority exists for aviation and is unfitted to carry out an impartial inquiry. My right hon. Friend could only listen to us, could make no comment, and did not bat an eyelid, properly, apparently impervious to our onslaught. I am sure that he and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State must have taken note of the strong case that we put to them.
Our case was that the decision in June 1984 to stop helicopter flights four months after the opening of the relevant section of the M25 should be sustained, and that the flights should not be reintroduced. That section of the M25 was opened in October 1985 and the flights stopped in February 1986. That decision was right at the time. Nothing has happened since to change its rightness. It remains right today.
On 11 November 1985 I asked the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he had made of the longterm benefits of the M25 circular motorway round London. He replied:
The M25 will provide a more convenient, quicker and safer route round London for through traffic. It will give easier access to ports and airports … and will relieve communities in


London and the south-east of through traffic, noise and congestion."—[Official Report, 11 November 1985; Vol. 86, c. 297.]
Thus, the Secretary of State stated that part of the purpose of the M25 is to relieve people of noise. He did not say the noise of motor vehicles only, but noise. Noise includes aircraft and helicopter noise. Therefore, the huge public investment in the M25 will be partly wasted if it is not fully used to reduce the impact of noise, including helicopter noise, on my constituents and those of other hon. Members who live between Heathrow and Gatwick.
The distance between Heathrow and Gatwick is only 40 miles. Express buses operate at most times of the day and can make the journey in 40 minutes. Sometimes the M25 is crowded, but 98 per cent. of the buses complete the journey in less than 60 minutes. There are five buses an hour, that is one every 12 minutes, so the average waiting time is six minutes. Therefore, the average time of the journey, including waiting time, is just under one hour. A helicopter takes 20 minutes, the gap between them would be 40 minutes, so the average waiting time would be 20 minutes. Including the waiting time for the helicopter, passengers would take on average 40 to 45 minutes for the journey. The whole thing is nonsense. Passengers will save only 10 or 15 minutes. They could brag to their business colleagues or to their children that they had been in a helicopter, but the real benefit is quite negligible. There is no justification for the disturbance this would cause, and I hope the Secretary of State will give short shrift to the impertinent application to renew the service.

Mr. Jeremy Hanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) for allowing me a couple of minutes to make four or five brief points. It is typical of his dedication that, having attracted the good fortune of an Adjournment debate, he should choose a subject of great sensitivity, one that is perhaps of the highest importance for people living in the borough of Richmond upon Thames. Many of the problems that my hon. Friend mentioned are experienced by people throughout the borough and the House will know that there is no matter of greater concern to my constituents. Indeed, it was the subject of my maiden speech and has been the subject of four further speeches since then.
I will not repeat what my hon. Friend has said. I agree thoroughly with every word that he has uttered. This morning in my house in Barnes I was woken up by aircraft noise merely because last night was somewhat milder than many of the nights we have had of late. I forecast the misery that many of my constituents will suffer throughout the summer—to dare to open a window at night will mean lost sleep.
My five points are these. First of all, there is now serious bunching of night flights. The numbers of night flights is ever-increasing, there is a de facto reduction in the hours of restriction and when Concorde comes over early in the morning, people find it difficult to get back to sleep and are all the more conscious of those flights.
In his letter of 27 January my hon. Friend the Minister said:
On the 5th of December last year after the arrival of Concorde at 4.14 in the morning there were 16 further landings before the end of the night restrictions period at 6.30 hours.

He went on to say:
It is not at all unusual for a number of other aircraft to arrive at Heathrow between 4 a.m. and 6.30 hours. Indeed, between these hours 15 aeroplanes landed on the 3rd December. 12 on the 2nd December, 11 on the 6th December, and 15 on the 8th December.
That is the Minister's own admission of the fact that the restriction on night flights has failed. Secondly, the number of flights in all has increased. We know that the Government had a commitment to the 285,000 air traffic movements limit at Heathrow. They dropped that because the Liberals, Labour and certain Conservatives voted against the Bill in Parliament. However, the Government were committed to that ATM policy on environmental grounds. Once the Bill had been defeated, they ditched that policy because of political problems over Stansted. They had the policy to start with and for that reason they should continue with it. Air traffic movements have now increased close to 300,000 and the figure is getting near to the danger limit of 310,000.
Thirdly, what has happened to the use of alternate runways? I should like my hon. Friend to look at that. Fourthly, there is the problem of helicopters. My constituency is not particularly affected by the Heathrow-Gatwick link, but it would be greatly affected by any link between the City of London and Heathrow. That link would cross Barnes and Kew, and I warn my hon. Friend that if he puts forward any proposal for a helicopter link between the City of London and Heathrow, he will be opposed not only by the people of Richmond and Barnes and Twickenham but by people in all the constituencies west of the City.
My last point is that on the demise of the GLC the aircraft noise-line will go. I urge my hon. Friend to seek every possible way of getting the noise-line back. An example of its effectiveness is that between July 1984 and October 1985, 1,404 calls were made on that line. Most of them had to do with late night or early morning flights. In the battle against aircraft noise it is vital—if my hon. Friend wants to remove the emotion and what is sometimes looked upon as unreasonable belief—that there are accurate data about night flights. That noise-line produced accurate data, and perhaps more than any other service of the GLC my constituents will miss that facility—unless the scientific services branch is replaced elsewhere. I beg my hon. Friend to look at night flights. I have been to see him with representatives from HACAN, the Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise to discuss these matters. I beg my hon. Friend to consider his views yet again.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Michael Spicer): First of all, I should like to direct the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) to section 76 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982. That section does not exclude all liability of aircraft operators for trespass and nuisance caused by aircraft in flight. The exemption applies only to aircraft flying at a reasonable height and complying with all the air navigation rules. Successive Governments have for many years taken the view that the problems posed by aircraft noise are in general best dealt with by taking and enforcing all practicable measures to ensure that the disturbance caused is minimised, bearing in mind the proper demands of the civil aviation industry.
A special point I should like to make in response to my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham and for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) who spoke about the general responsibilities of the Government, is that I fully recognise that a Government as committed as we are to the success and expansion of aviation must, perhaps more than any other Government, be aware of and be prepared to respond to the anxieties in the public mind about aircraft noise. One of our priorities must be to tackle the problem at source, to determine which aircraft we shall allow to operate in the United Kingdom and for how long. As my hon. Friends will know, non-noise-certificated jet aeroplanes on the United Kingdom register were banned on 1 January, a full year ahead of most other European countries. We are committed to a similar ban on all such foreign registered aeroplanes from 1 January 1988.
Internationally, we are playing an important part in looking for a way to phase out the so-called chapter two jet aeroplanes, and I am pleased with the co-operation that we have received from the industry, even though it could have cost implications for some airlines. Noise standards generally will be reviewed from time to time and I shall take whatever steps are necessary, either domestically or internationally, to ensure that the controls are as stringent as possible, bearing in mind that they have to be technically feasible and economically reasonable.
Helicopters have long been a source of disturbance to some people and my hon. Friends talked about that. Helicopters have so far been able to operate without standards to govern them. International agreement is essential, and I am pleased to say that ICAO has now issued specific standards that we will adopt in the next few months. I am sure these will be environmentally beneficial and will be welcomed by my hon. Friends.
Regrettably, noise standards do not of themselves totally solve the problem. People, including those in my hon. Friends' constituencies, will continue to experience some discomfort from aircraft noise, even after we have done what we can through noise standards. Their burden can and must be eased by the implementation not only of noise standards but of operational measures such as quiet take-off and approach procedures.
At the airports designated under section 80 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted—the first of which applies to the constituencies of my hon. Friends—the Secretary of State and I have direct noise abatement responsibility. This responsibility will not be changed in any way by the privatisation of the British Airports Authority. It is essential that noise abatement measures are thoroughly reappraised from time to time. That is why the Government have embarked on important reviews about our responsibilities at designated airports. In answer to my hon. Friends, I can say that these reviews include noise monitoring, night restrictions, noise insulation and noise measurement.
All these reviews are progressing well. As my hon. Friends know, last month I embarked on a major, national consultation exercise to assist me in deciding, in the context of noise measurement, whether we should change from the NNI—the noise and number index—to LEQ as an index of aircraft noise at the designated airports. I am approaching this review with a completely open mind; my main concern, like I am sure that of my hon. Friends, is that we choose the right index and that we use the index which is most suitable and which commands public

confidence. I have allowed six months for the consultation phase of the exercise and I look forward to considering all views before reaching any decisions.
Our noise index exercise is firmly based on research. The same is true of our other measures—night restrictions, for example. The last review, in 1981, of our night restrictions policy was based on the conclusions of a three-year study into the relationship between aircraft noise and sleep disturbance. A further study to validate or to assess changes since the original study has recently been completed and consultation with interested parties will of course play an important determinant of what we decide.
I am also engaged in a thorough review of the monitoring of noise and track keeping, in which both of my hon. Friends have taken a great interest. I want to be sure that the machinery for doing this is adequate and that we are able to retrieve the information in a form which enables us to ensure compliance by airlines with whatever rules we lay down.
Another important aspect of our approach to the problem of aircraft noise is the role of, and the scope for, consultation. I firmly believe that full consultation and public debate are essential components in the development of the right noise abatement measures—those which strike the right balance between conflicting interests. Poor consultation leads to hostility and confrontation. I can assure my hon. Friends that the present arrangement for consultation will remain unaltered by the privatisation of the BAA airports.
I turn now to the concerns expressed by my hon. Friends about the Heathrow-Gatwick helicopter link, which is known as the Airlink. Some measure of the different views upon this has been demonstrated by the interventions of my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel), Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) and Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth). In accordance with a direction given in 1984 by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and reaffirmed by a further direction last November, the present Airlink service terminated on 7 February. This was four months after the opening of the Wisley-Reigate stretch of the M25.
British Caledonian applied, in June 1985, to the Civil Aviation Authority to vary its licence so it could continue the Airlink service along new routes and at revised altitudes. My right hon. Friend directed the CAA that, if it decided to grant the application, the Airlink service should not fly along the new routes and altitudes until the matter had been referred to him and he had taken the final decision. The CAA announced on 4 February 1986 that it had granted British Caledonian's application and had referred the matter to the Secretary of State under section 17 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982.
My right hon. Friend and I have been considering the CAA's decision, together with all the evidence submitted to the hearing and the transcript of the proceedings——

Mr. Malcolm Bruce: The Minister will be aware that British Caledonian Helicopters is based in my constituency. In his considerations, I hope that he will take account of the fact that Airlink is crucial to the profitability of British Caledonian Helicopters and that a refusal to continue with it would put at risk 170 jobs that are based in Aberdeen.

Mr. Spicer: That intervention will be noted.

Mr. Greenway: It is absolutely typical of Liberals to pay no attention to the problems of local people. We shall remember that in Ealing, North and Ealing generally. We know now that Liberals want the helicopter link. There is considerable resentment in the area over which the helicopter link would operate that no inquiry has been allowed, and I have asked the Ombudsman to consider this.

Mr. Spicer: These brief interventions are further signs of the great disparity of views that exist on this issue. We have received many representations, including many from hon. Members on both sides of the House, and we are considering all of these extremely carefully. I shall note the comments that have been made during the debate.
Clearly, this is a very important and sensitive issue. My right hon. Friend and I are well aware of the strength of feeling that has been expressed, both by those in favour of the Airlink as well as those opposed to it. It is right that we should weigh all the arguments very carefully before coming to our decision. My right hon. Friend hopes to make an announcement on this matter within a few weeks. It would therefore be inappropriate for me to comment any further at this stage other than to say that I have listened carefully to what has been said on both sides of the argument.
I hope that I have said enough to indicate the Government's deep awareness of the problems that are created by aircraft noise. We shall always be receptive to positive and realistic suggestions of measures which can achieve a significant improvement, whether they are made by my hon. Friends or by others. I am grateful, personally, to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham for raising this matter as it has given me an opportunity to respond fully on behalf of the Government.

Greater London Council

Mr. Tony Banks: In just under three hours' time, I shall be taking the chair at county hall for the last full meeting of the Greater London council. At midnight on 31 March the GLC will cease to exist and 97 years of continuous Londonwide government will be at an end. It will be a historic moment in the often turbulent history of London local government. I seek to draw the attention of the House to the events that are due to take place across the water in the full and confident expectation that the abolition of the GLC will prove to be merely a temporary aberration.
I remind the House that it was the Prime Minister who insisted on the GLC being abolished. The right hon. Lady did so because, in my opinion, she is wholly ignorant of local government. She is brimful of prejudice and utterly vindictive. The Prime Minister's image of the GLC between 1981 and 1983 was that created by Fleet street. The image was bizarre, extreme and without foundation. However, it successfully inflamed the Prime Minister's already well developed sense of bigotry. With her eyes on what she thought was party political gain, she wrote into the Tory party manifesto the commitment to abolish the GLC. We have that on the very best authority within the Conservative party.
Naturally, the Government attempted subsequently to dress up the Prime Minister's diktat with spurious claims about taking local government closer to the people. The truth of the matter came, however, from the lips of the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit), the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Tory party. On 14 March 1984, the right hon. Gentleman said:
The Labour Party is the party of division. In its present form, it represents a threat to the democratic values and institutions on which our Parliamentary system is based. The GLC is typical of this new, modern, divisive version of socialism. It must be defeated. So we shall abolish the GLC.
Such a statement should send a shiver down the spines of those who believe in justice and democracy. It reveals that the Conservative party is now in the hands of louts and that Britain's Government is being run by people who have nothing but contempt for democracy.
The abolition of the GLC has nothing to do with efficiency in local government. Of the 2,000 or so submissions received by the Government in response to their original proposals that were outlined in the White Paper entitled "Streamlining the Cities", not one from an independent or authoritative source was in support of GLC abolition. So embarrassed were Ministers by the overwhelmingly hostile reaction to their proposals that they refused to give details of the submissions or to lodge them in the Library. Indeed, the House was denied a debate on the White Paper. It soon became clear that the Prime Minister and her colleagues were not going to allow facts to get in the way of their prejudices. Repeated requests from Members for some assessment of costs or savings arising from abolition were met with blank refusals after initial estimates, clearly plucked from the air by confused and panicky Ministers, were quickly proved to be absurd.
I should like to place on record how delighted I am that the Government's estimate of 5,000 redundancies in London arising out of the abolition of the GLC has been


proved wrong. We now estimate that there will be a net increase in public sector jobs as a result of abolition, which merely demonstrates the efficient way that the GLC's current services are being staffed.
I have sat through hundreds of hours of debate in the House in various places on the abolition of the GLC, and, partial though I am—I am prepared to confess that—I can honestly say that I have never heard the Government win one of the arguments. Indeed, some of the worst maulings inflicted upon Ministers have come from senior Members on the Benches behind them.
Abolition of the GLC has undoubtedly done great damage to the electoral fortunes of the Conservative party in London, and naturally I welcome that. Indeed, the latest opinion polls published yesterday put Labour a clear 15 per cent. ahead of the Tories in London. However, far more importantly, abolition has done great damage to the image of Parliament. It has demonstrated that rational arguments, natural justice and public opinion are of no consequence whatever when faced by a brutal and arrogant Government with an overwhelming majority. As right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have said on a number of occasions, abolition was a classic example of the elective dictatorship at work.
To have major changes in the structures of local government predicated on the political vindictiveness of the Prime Minister is bad enough, but then to have parliamentary sovereignty used to abolish an election and to destroy a whole area of local democracy is constitutionally outrageous.
The abolition of the GLC will leave London in a confused mess. Naturally, we shall muddle through—somehow we always do. But Parliament has been forced to expend enormous time and energy on a measure which is wholly irrelevant to the great problems facing the nation and our capital city. If only the Prime Minister hated London's unemployment and inner-city poverty as much as she hated county hall, perhaps London would not now be the city of despair that it has become to so many of our citizens.
After 31 March, London's local government will present a confused and haphazard pattern, botched together to try to make sense of abolition. Ministers said that abolition would streamline local government and remove unnecessary services, but an examination will quickly show that virtually all the council's present powers and services will remain. But instead of them being administered by one democratically elected and accountable body, they are being passed on to no fewer than 69 successor bodies—boroughs, joint boards, quangos and Government Departments.
I shall specify one quango, the London Residuary Body, truly the quango of all quangos, set up by a Government who once said that their policy was to abolish them. The LRB has a true-blue Tory as its chairman on a cool £50,000 a year salary. Appointed board members are paid the equivalent of £6,000 a year for one day's work a week—very nice work if you can get it. But, of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you cannot, unless you are a personal friend of a Secretary of State or a loyal supporter of the Tory party, and I accuse you of neither of those faults.
I remind hon. Members that Ken Livingstone, who was democratically elected, received the princely sum of £7,000 a year in allowances and expenses to run far more services than the LRB is receiving. However, in its recent

budget the LRB announced a budget of something just short of two thirds of the GLC's budget. It is supposed to wind itself up in five years, but with all the additional tasks that it has now been given there is no chance of that happening. Indeed, litigation is still outstanding from the 1964 reorganisation of London's local government, so with 10,000 GLC properties to dispose of, what chance has the LRB got of tidying all that up in five years? However, that is an academic argument because, after the Labour party wins the next general election, the LRB will be sent packing.
While I am sending messages to the LRB, let me remind it that should county hall be sold as a hotel or supermarket—I unveiled our latest GLC blue plaque outside county hall only an hour or so ago—the next Labour Government will take it back for London. That is a firm commitment given by the shadow spokesman for the Environment.
London, of course, will survive the abolition of the GLC: we all know that. But many services will be less efficiently run, and many groups of people and organisations will be badly hit when the GLC goes. I shall highlight just a few.
The arts in London will suffer greatly, right the way through from the great centres to the smallest of the touring companies, because the GLC has been a magnificent funder of the arts. We estimate that the shortfall in arts funding in London will run to about £10 million next year. At the moment, the Law Lords are deliberating on further legal points about the GLC's forward funding. If we lose that case, the arts in London will lose another £4·6 million because that has been built into the forward package; and that does not include the black arts centre at the Roundhouse.

Mr. Toby Jessel: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the tax concessions in the Budget for charitable bodies, including arts bodies, and the new proposal by which each person can deduct £100 a year from his salary and receive tax relief in order to benefit charities in the arts will give tremendous benefits to the arts, including those in the Greater London area?

Mr. Banks: Of course I know of the proposals. We had a debate not long ago on business sponsorship of the arts when we raised the matter of tax concessions. I welcome them. Who would not? Anyone who is interested in the arts would welcome them But the hon. Gentleman is deceiving himself if he thinks that that will in any way substitute for the loss of funding that the arts in London and throughout the metropolitan area will suffer as a result of the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties. It will not do, but time will tell, and we can come back to that later.
The immediate areas in London which will suffer will be the ethnic and community arts where the GLC has funded art forms and groups that have long been ignored. Those are the areas for which it is most difficult to get business sponsorship and private donations.
With Easter weekend upon us, it is well worth remembering all the GLC-funded festivals in our parks—the Easter parade, Thamesday, South Bank weekend, the May Day festivals, the London horse show and children's days. All those now have question marks against their future. Parks that were being developed, such as Burgess and Mile End, can never now be completed


without a Londonwide body. The future running of the Royal Festival hall gives me great concern, with 160 of our present staff there facing unemployment. The open foyer policy has been widely acclaimed, but how long will the Arts Council retain it in view of the fact that the South Bank board has already decided that it will change the GLC's South Bank literature centre—Bookspace—back into a restaurant? That does not seem like the South Bank board approaching in a serious way the problem of making the arts more accessible.
I shall be monitoring developments closely on the South Bank, and, again, I look forward to the return of the Royal Festival hall to a democratically elected council for London—a repossession already promised by the shadow spokesman for the arts.
Speaking, for a moment, as chairman of the GLC, I wish to record my personal satisfaction with the enormous progress made by the council in advancing the interests of London's women. The same is true in respect of our policies to combat racism and the discrimination still suffered by those Londoners with disabilities, by gays, lesbians and the elderly. It is right that the GLC should have funded groups concerned with the welfare of gays and lesbians, but so vile and reactionary are the majority of Fleet street journalists that the average Londoner could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that that was all that the GLC ever did.
The whole miserable saga may have concerned about 50 so-called controversial groups, but there were literally hundreds of other voluntary organisations over which there has never been any disagreement. The GLC's budget for the voluntary sector rose from £1 million in 1981 to £82 million in this, our final year. It is in this crucial area of caring and of social welfare for Londoners that the greatest damage could be done after abolition.
The Government's proposals for substitute funding are puny and wholly inadequate. Yet even at this stage the GLC is trying to stave off disaster in the voluntary sector. Today we have paid into court more than £30 million for funding the voluntary sector, should we win the case in the other place. If we lose, the money will go to the London Residuary Body for distribution to the London boroughs. Of course, the LRB will say that the abolition of the GLC is producing results and saving money. But the money currently being distributed to the boroughs comes from selling off assets and dismantling the balances accumulated. Once that money has gone, there will be no more, and then the real cost of abolition will become apparent.
The cost in terms of service efficiency will become apparent far more quickly than that. For example, in its waste disposal and recycling services, the GLC led the world in terms of efficiency and technology. The new proposals for London, whereby the GLC's unitary scheme is broken up into a series of groupings and authorities, has dumbfounded all those involved in waste disposal. The desirability of retaining a Londonwide waste disposal authority was self-evident, but so set were the Government against admitting the need for any strategic functions that they rejected it out of hand. What a bunch of petty and unimaginative little people now run this Government. The boroughs are already disagreeing among themselves over waste disposal, and the costs of waste disposal in London

are set to soar through increased staffing and the loss of economies of scale. It is a pathetic shambles, and Ministers know it to be so.
I shall now deal with transport, because we can already see the impact of abolition as London Transport was taken away from the democratic control of the GLC and handed over to yet another quango in 1984. Since then, bus services have been reduced, fares have been dramatically increased, and many jobs have been lost. The GLC's diala-ride, taxicard and concessionary fares are superb facilities, the future of which cannot now be totally guaranteed as boroughs and the London Regional Transport increase charges or simply run down the services provided.
I have no doubt, for example, that the GLC's lorry ban will be terminated by the Secretary of State for Transport at the earliest opportunity. The fragmentation of bus lanes, cycle lanes and traffic schemes will effectively mean the end of most of those environmentally desirable innovations.
I have merely detailed a few of the areas where abolition of the GLC will have a marked effect on London. There are many more, such as planning, housing, industry, employment, scientific and technical services, and computer and information technology. Valuable services and expertise that have been built up over many years will be lost. All this is being done not because of any assessment of the needs of London and its citizens but because of petty party political spite on the part of the Prime Minister and her Government.
An opinion poll published yesterday shows that 81 per cent. of Londoners think that it is important to have a single body in the capital city for providing and co-ordinating services, and that no less than 94 per cent. of them believe that it is important for such a single body to be democratically elected. When I lower the GLC flag at county hall at midnight on 31 March, London will become the only capital city in Europe to be without a citywide government. Such a situation cannot continue for very long.
Apparently, even most Tories in London believe that a strategic authority for London will be re-established, and the Labour leadership has already committed itself to creating such an authority soon after the next general election. What we are about to witness is a mere break of service in London government for a year or so. For my part, I will continue to keep the name of the GLC before the House in every way open to me. I can assure the House that I have boundless energy and total commitment for such a campaign. Immediately after the Easter recess, I shall seek leave to introduce a Bill to establish a London-wide authority, based on the conclusions of the GLC's research and consultation project. I have that document with me, and copies are being sent to all London Members of Parliament.
The GLC's abolition will haunt this Government through the coming Fulham by-election, the London borough council elections and right through to the general election. I still maintain that abolition will prove to be the single biggest error of political judgment on the part of this Government, and I for one will take every opportunity to help rub their faces in it. I will never forgive or forget those who, for reasons of spite or political preferment, have caused so much misery to loyal GLC employees and have


created so much confusion and uncertainty for London's local government. But time will allow us to settle all these scores, and revenge will be very sweet indeed.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Richard Tracey): rose— —

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister responsible for sport to reply to this debate when the Secretary of State for the Environment clearly has responsibility for this monstrous act of abolition of the GLC?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): That is not a matter for me.

Mr. Tracey: I am glad to hear that after more than 200 hours of debate on the subject of the GLC's abolition, and with the benefit of answers from my colleagues to innumerable parliamentary questions, the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), the chairman of the GLC, has at last changed his tune. A year ago, he and his colleagues claimed that abolition simply could not be put into effect by 1 April 1986. In the Standing Committee debate on 18 December 1984, he even went so far as to say:
Our point is that it is impossible to achieve such an objective by that date".—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 18 December 1984; c. 13.]
With a mere 100 hours to go, I think that I can safely predict that the hon. Gentleman will be proved conclusively wrong.
Of course, total conversion would be too much to hope for. Although the hon. Gentleman no longer claims that abolition cannot be achieved, he is still prophesying chaos and disaster, as is his custom. He simply cannot believe that the excellent London borough councils are capable of taking on their new responsibilities without the GLC to tell them where they are going wrong. Let me remind the House that those authorities—the London borough councils and the Common Council—are already the major providers of services in London. As we said in the White Paper entitled "Streamlining the Cities", the case for change rests on the fact that
in the metropolitan areas, the boroughs and district councils are the primary local government units. They are responsible for the majority of local spending. They are big enough to have full responsibility for most local services; at the same time they meet the need for an authority to be accessible to the local community".

Mr. Corbyn: Will the Minister give way on that point?

Mr. Tracey: These facts have not changed. Despite all the GLC's expensive publicity—and my goodness it has been expensive—the GLC has had full responsibility for only a very limited range of services. Indeed, the only change since the White Paper has been the establishment of London Regional Transport, which has further reduced the GLC's areas of responsibility. Of course, that has not stopped it spending ratepayers' money, searching for a role, or continuing the conflict and uncertainty which abolition is designed to eliminate by removing this unnecessary tier of local government.
It is not only the conflict and uncertainty to which we can now wave goodbye. We expect the removal of the unnecessary tier both to improve the structure of local government and to lead to savings in manpower and

expenditure. The size of the savings will, of course, depend on the decisions of the successors to the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. Eighteen months ago we estimated that administrative savings could, after transitional costs, amount to £100 million a year or some 7,000 posts in London and the metropolitan county councils together. Indeed, there are already signs that they could be of the right order. The allowances for redundancy payments which the residuary bodies are making in their budgets total close to 7,000, and I understand that NALGO has a similar estimate.
Yesterday, The London Standard blazoned the headline "Job cuts fiasco", but that was belied by the article beneath it. Depending on which bit of it one wants to believe, there will be 2,300 redundancies in London, or 2,775.
It is of course important not to confuse initial redundancy figures with posts saved. Staff have been leaving the GLC and metropolitan county councils for jobs elsewhere, and some jobs in the residuary bodies will disappear later in the year. Further, we always expected that the numbers made compulsorily redundant would be much smaller. I am glad to say that this seems likely to be the case. But savings in actual posts of £100 million annually recurring is not exactly chicken feed, even by Labour county hall standards.
Moreover, ratepayers are already seeing the benefit of the changes to come. In London there are widespread and significant reductions in rates and a number of borough councils have acknowledged that the abolition of the GLC is one of the factors that has made the reductions possible.
It would of course, be surprising if the hon. Member for Newham, North-West, in his partisan way, had anything good to say about the prospect of reduced burdens falling on both commercial and domestic ratepayers. He does not believe that the borough councils can be more efficient than the GLC. I must, however, emphasise that the figures that I have quoted are for administrative savings alone. We have always said that policy savings resulting from decisions taken by authorities closer to the communities that they serve will be in addition to the savings from rationalisation alone, even though it is still too soon to estimate what these will be.
We have also made it clear that references to policy savings should not be taken to imply wholesale cuts in services. There has been scaremongering talk, for example, of reductions in the fire brigade. But my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made it absolutely clear that no fire stations can be closed or fire appliances withdrawn without his express approval. He simply would not give that consent if it meant that the level of fire cover would fall below the nationally recommended standard.
There is absolutely no reason why the transfer of functions should mean any decline in service standards, nor need it lead to the abandonment of useful London-wide facilities. The London boroughs have, for example, carefully considered the future of a number of these and have decided to set up a scheme for Londonwide research and intelligence under section 88 of the 1985 Act. They have also decided arrangements to continue the work of the scientific branch, to set up a voluntary scheme for concessionary fares and to continue the taxicard scheme.
Hardly surprisingly, the majority did not see a need to continue the GLC's women's equality unit in its present form or the GLC's police committee support unit—an iniquitous organisation—but then the GLC has never


had any responsibility for the police and we always expected the successor authorities to look critically at the services which they inherit to ensure efficiency and economy in the interest of all Londoners. They have shown that they are perfectly capable of taking decisions in the interests of London as a whole.
In addition to the facilities that I have already mentioned, the boroughs' co-ordinating committee has agreed to set up a scheme under section 48 for collective grants to voluntary bodies serving wider areas. This scheme, based on Richmond, has a budget of £27 million for 1986–87.
Throughout the debates on abolition, much play has been made of its consequences for the voluntary sector in London in particular. We said from the outset that it was not our intention to damage worthwhile voluntary projects through abolition; and we have provided a package of measures to support that intention.
Apart from providing in the Act for the section 48 scheme, for collective funding, we have ensured through the rate support grant settlement that the boroughs have access to all the resources that would have been available to the GLC and have been able to take account of the geographical distribution of £35 million of GLC grants to local voluntary bodies. We have also added to the successors' resources. We have offered transitional grant of £40 million over four years on projects previously supported by the GLC and MCCs. The amount of grant allocated to the boroughs for 1986–87 is over £12 million. I therefore believe that the Government have honourably fulfilled the assurances which we gave the voluntary sector during the abolition debate.
I do not, of course, claim that there are not some voluntary bodies still uncertain about their future—although the boroughs' decision to provide temporary funding through the Richmond scheme will have provided a welcome relief to many. Nor am I claiming that all GLC-funded groups will receive the same or even any support from the successor authorities. But that is a decision for them. While we have given the successors the resources the GLC and MCCs would have had—and more—we are not in the business of dictating their priorities, nor indeed the speed at which they reach their decisions.
As we said from the outset, abolition is all about local decisions being arrived at locally and democratically and I think that the London boroughs have shown through their Richmond scheme that they are well able to rise to the challenge. Despite the hon. Member's predictions of chaos and widespread disaster, I think that the worries about successor authorities failing to provide substantial funding can now be discarded and that once the dust has settled we will see the voluntary sector continuing to flourish.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the arts. I can predict a much less gloomy future than has been claimed. Once again, we have stuck to our undertaking to provide the resources that the GLC and MCCs would have had, and we have gone further in providing £43 million in additional central funding, including £25 million to the Arts Council for the performing arts. Here, too, the successor authorities are showing that they are well up to the task. Westminster city council has, for example, offered grants approaching £3 million, including £2·2 million to the English National Opera and the London Festival Ballet, while the Arts Council has established the South Bank board to run the whole arts complex. I am fully confident that the South Bank will flourish under its management.
Opposition Members may claim that the new South Bank board is only one of a whole host of new bodies that we have had to establish to take on the GLC's responsibilities, but even that claim does not stand up to close examination. The Arts Council is hardly a new organisation, nor is the Thames water authority which will be taking over land drainage and flood protection which are already water authority functions outside London. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission and the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, which will also be taking on new responsibilities, were not born out of the Local Government Act 1985. What we have are the new ILEA, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority and the London waste regulation and disposal authorities—hardly a host, even counting the London residuary body, which is of course a purely temporary organisation needed to wind up the affairs of the GLC.
I do not say that winding up the GLC and the MCCs will be easy. It will be more difficult perhaps than it should have been because of the obstructive behaviour which persisted far too long and was encouraged by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West. I am sure that he will be devoting his considerable energies to publicising any and every little thing that he believes does not go smoothly. But the problems will be transitional and will be resolved. What remains will be a streamlined structure with the borough councils taking their proper place in London's local government. They will show that they do not need the GLC, and their ratepayers will reap the benefits.
In a very short time people will be asking what all the fuss was about. Indeed, even now, after all their initial fervour, all that the Opposition can manage in the final week of Parliament is a half-hour Adjournment debate initiated by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West. That just shows that the GLC is going out, not with a bang, but with a whine and a whinge and a contribution from the most political chairman of the GLC that we have ever seen.

Warrington (Refuse Tip)

Mr. Mark Carlisle: I am grateful for the opportunity of this Adjournment debate. I must correct an error which is entirely my fault. The request for the Adjournment debate refers to the decision not to call in the planning application for a refuse tip on land at Moore in Cheshire. I am reminded that although for some reason all the parties, including the borough council, refer to the land at Moore, the land is not at Moore but at Arpley meadows, the whole of which is in the Warrington district. No part of it is in the parish of Moore.
I realise that it may be said that I am trying to bolt the stable door after the horse has fled. On Monday 17 March the Secretary of State took the decision not to call in the application by the Manchester Ship Canal Company to have a waste disposal tip on the land at Arpley meadow but to leave the decision to the county council.
Within hours of the Secretary of State making that decision the Cheshire county council planning committee, ironically with one of the Labour councillors for Warringon in the chair, approved the plan for such a tip with indecent haste. Therefore, the decision for Cheshire had been taken. I understand from the borough council that it is considering the possibility of a judicial review of the decision taken by Cheshire county council, presumably based on the speed with which the decision was taken. That speed did not enable the council to consider objections to the scheme and I understand that Warrington borough council was not given the opportunity to comment on the amended plan which was approved on 18 March.
I protest over the fact that the Ministry did not call in the planning application. There is one simple question. Why was the planning application not called in by the Ministry? Of course I accept that we must have waste disposal tips somewhere. However, if we were more efficient in the recycling of waste we would save a great deal of natural resources and have less need for large tips. In this day and age alternative methods of waste disposal should be considered when any form of public inquiry is held.
However, we must have some form of tips. I recognise that the county council is under a statutory duty to provide for waste disposal. I also recognise that, wherever a tip is located, it is likely to be unpopular and there are likely to be objections. I accept that, if an application is called in after a public inquiry, it may well be that, at the end of the day, the same decision will be taken. My objection is that by leaving that decision to Cheshire county council the objectors' case has not been heard.
It cannot be said that this was not a controversial application. It was opposed by many local people and it was opposed by all the parish councils in my constituency—Penketh, Lymm and Moore. The hon. Member for Warrington, North (Mr. Hoyle) and myself are also aware that it was opposed by Warrington borough council. All these parties asked the Minister to call the application in for consideration.
This is not a minor matter. The plan has been considerably modified. The original proposal was that the tip should be used for 40 years, but that has been modified to 25 years. That is still a generation—a generation for many people of lorries going in and out of the site. The site is roughly 400 acres. The height of the tip above

ground level has been modified but it is still believed that it will reach 130 ft above the ground. The site will have 550,000 tons of rubbish dumped there every year. It is clear that it will be the major tip for Cheshire and it will also provide space for the waste from Merseyside.
This is not a normal type of planning application. Although it is true that the owner of the land is the Manchester Ship Canal and although it is true that the company made the application, the interested party in granting that application is the county council which is proposing to use the tip. It seems inevitable that it was bound to grant an application, if given the opportunity to decide it, because it is the party interested in achieving that result.
The speed with which the decision was taken certainly tends to confirm the fact that the decision had been prejudged. I repeat that, as far as I am aware, neither the district council nor the parish councils were officially asked to comment on the modified proposals. The failure of the Minister to call the application in has meant that the objectors have not been heard. The impression that is given is that Cheshire county council has been the judge and jury. I remind the Minister of the old adage that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done.
Why was the application not called in? I have no doubt that the Minister will say that the Secretary of State was sympathetic to the proposal but that it did not meet the criteria which are used for decisions of this kind. I realise there is great pressure on the Ministry to call in many inquiries and that it cannot call them all in. I realise that one must have some criteria and that one must use power to call in sparingly. What are the criteria that are used? Are they statutory or discretionary? If they are discretionary, why was discretion not exercised on this occasion? If the Secretary of State felt he could not call the application in because it did not meet the criteria surely the criteria are wrong and should be changed.
I am aware that any planning inquiry is time-consuming and expensive. It has one great advantage—it allows people to be heard. I have no doubt that the parish councils, together with the development corporation, the borough council and those concerned with conservation, were anxious to be heard on this occasion. One does not know what the outcome or modifications would have been had there been such an inquiry.
Where there is a major application of a nature that will affect the lives of many people for many years, and where the planning authority is the applicant, the Ministry should call the application in. If the criteria do not allow the Ministry to do that, I submit that the criteria ought to be changed.
I protest that this decision has been made. It is a mistaken decision and it is unfair to those involved. In my area it has been described as dictatorial and undemocratic. I have promised the hon. Member for Warrington, North that I would give him an opportunity to contribute to this debate so I shall make one final point.
It is said that the land has ecological importance and that much of the wildlife habitat would be destroyed by the tip. The traffic on all the routes will be enormous but I have no doubt that the county will do their best to meet that increase in traffic. It will require a new bridge to be built over the Mersey. Will the building of that bridge require further permission or, if it is on private land, will the county council be able to build it? I understand that the outer Warrington local plan had recommended that the


area should be protected for recreational use. There was the possibility of a county park. The hon. Member for Warrington, North and myself are aware that there is not much spare land in that part of Cheshire. I am concerned, not so much with the merits of the case, but the failure to give those who wish to object the opportunity to advance their objections. I bitterly regret the Department's decision not to call in the application.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. We got off to a late start this morning, but we have made good progress in catching up with the printed schedule. I should be grateful if hon. Members would help me get back on course at about 1 o'clock.

Mr. Mark Carlisle: I spoke for just 11 minutes.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful.

Mr. Doug Hoyle: I shall try to assist you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in getting back to our schedule.
I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Carlisle) for giving me this brief opportunity to support his objections. The matter affects not just his constituency but mine. Much traffic would be caused by 314 loads a day going through a heavily populated part of my constituency on Liverpool road to the new bridge that will be built at Forest Way, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman described.
The land has ecological, recreational and educational value. There should have been a public inquiry. Despite the modification from 40 years, 25 years is still a long time. It is still a high tip in low-lying land. It will be seen for a long way, certainly from the heavily populated area in my constituency of Warrington, North, and from the main railway line that runs from London to Scotland. These days the impression that people get as they pass through an area is important. Warrington is a delightful area, with many places of scenic beauty, but if there is such an eyesore that can be seen from the railway line, people might decide not to bring their industry and so on to Warrington. Therefore, the proposal is a mistake.
I do not understand why the Secretary of State did not use his discretion under section 35 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 and the articles of the General Development Order 1977. Under those provisions, he could have called for a public inquiry. The reason is that Cheshire county council has an interest—it will manage the waste disposal tip, which will be very large. The council will profit from it as the waste will come not only from the Warrington and Cheshire area but from Merseyside. As other tips come to the end of their lives, the amount of waste will be added to. As the right hon. and learned Member for Warrington, South said, that is a wasteful way of going about it. Other methods could have been used. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was right to say that Cheshire county council is judge and jury. It acted speedily, within 24 hours, so that no one had a chance to make an objection.
All the parties on Warrington borough council were unanimous in their opposition to the proposal. Environmentalists and anglers object. I have much

correspondence from my constituents and others objecting to it. I cannot understand why the Secretary of State took that action. Many people think that it was a spineless, diabolical thing to do to inflict that on the people of Warrington. My constituents and people in the surrounding area are dismayed, disappointed and disgusted at the action of not only the Secretary of State but Cheshire county council. I want to convey their views and dismay in the strongest terms.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Richard Tracey): My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Carlisle) has raised an interesting and important matter. Quite rightly, he has been supported by the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Mr. Hoyle) from the Labour Benches. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I know that the matter about which they are concerned is controversial. Indeed, proposals for development often are. That is one reason why in this country we have a planning system of which we are justly proud, which allows the majority of planning decisions on development proposals to be made by locally elected representatives. They are generally in the best position to understand the needs of their area and to have regard to the views of their electorate. I do not need to remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that often in debates in the House there is much talk about over-centralisation.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warrington, South has taken a close interest in the proposal by Manchester Ship Canal Company to tip domestic and industrial waste on 390 acres of land between the ship canal and the river Mersey at Moore, near Warrington. I appreciate his concern. Tips are, by their nature, particularly controversial. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend has lent his support to those of his constituents who approached him to express their opposition to the scheme.
I fully understand that local people are concerned about the impact of the proposal. Lymm parish council and Great Sankey parish council wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State expressing concern and drawing attention to the strong objection of local bodies. He received from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warrington, South the representations of the Warrington New Town Nature Conservation Group. It expressed concern about the loss of areas of county ecological significance and the loss of an area used for informal recreation. The representations from Warrington borough council were brought to my right hon. Friend's attention by the hon. Member for Warrington, North. The borough was concerned, too, about the involvement of Cheshire county council as planning authority and waste disposal authority.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was aware of the other objections from local bodies and local residents. Some of the local interests that originally expressed concern about the proposal did not object, and I understand that some withdrew their objections. That resulted at least in part from amendments to the proposal, which were negotiated by Cheshire county council with the ship canal company. They clearly went some way to meeting some of the objections of local people.
Let me rehearse briefly the details as I understand them. The site is intended to replace an existing disposal area at


Gateworth farm on the opposite bank of the River Mersey. Capacity there will be exhausted in 1988. The new site is mainly dredging deposit ground, now disused. Cheshire county council, is to lease and manage the tip and will be the major user of the tip. The life of the tip was originally proposed to be 40 years, but in negotiation with Cheshire county council, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, the ship canal company reduced that to 25 years. Other amendments included reducing the visual impact of the tip by lowering its height by 14 m and by proposing shallower gradients. When complete, the southern section of the tip is to return to agriculture and the northern area to forestry.
I understand that a large measure of agreement has been reached with the Cheshire Conservation Trust. The trust is to lease and manage 180 acres of land adjoining the proposed waste disposal site as a nature reserve.
In its revised application, the ship canal company proposed to open up a footpath along the southern bank of the River Mersey and to provide an increased area devoted to forestry and landscaping. So, in the longer term, a substantial area of former waste land will become widely available for informal outdoor recreation. Wearing another of my hats, I welcome that.
But to pass on to the proposition that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had before him, it was not a question of the merits of the proposal—the issue was whether it was appropriate to take the decision out of the hands of Cheshire county council. My right hon. and learned Friend asked about that. The Secretary of State considered the proposal against his general policy, which is to continue to be very selective about calling in cases for his own decision. There is a long-standing policy that applications will in general be called in only if planning issues of wider than local importance are involved.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, after very careful consideration of all the representations that he received, decided that the application should be left to the county council to determine. He appreciated the strength of the views raised in opposition to the proposal and acknowledged their

importance, but he concluded that they were of local rather than regional or national significance, and he was not persuaded that it was a matter that the county council did not have the competence to determine.
I am informed that the application was approved by the county council on 18 March. That is subject to negotiation of an agreement, under section 52 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, with the canal company for the 180 acres of woodland and wet grassland immediately to the south of the application site to be leased and managed by the Cheshire Conservation Trust.
I must emphasise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State considered whether he should take the decision out of the hands of the county council. He was not taking a view on the merits of the proposal. But I would like, nonetheless, to invite the House to look beyond this particular case and consider the need far a positive approach to the whole Mersey basin. Right hon. and hon. Members will have heard of the Mersey basin campaign—a major Government initiative to clean the undoubtedly badly polluted water courses of the Mersey system and to promote matching improvements in the use of the land alongside. The basin covers 1,000 square miles. It takes in river and watercourses from the Pennine foothills to the mouth of the Mersey. The aim is to bring together public, private and voluntary sectors to attack the twin problems of water pollution and riverside dereliction. I hope that the energy and skill of local people and groups will be directed in a positive way to using every asset to bring this about.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's top priority is care for the environment. I do not think that anyone can doubt that from the statements he has made. The Mersey basin campaign is a prime example of that commitment. Ultimately, if everybody with an interest in the area pulls together, the result will make a contribution to the economy of the area and to creating an attractive environment and recreational facilities for the good people of the north-west.

Liverpool

Mr. David Alton: In following the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Carlisle) I am glad to say that I shall be saying a word or two at the end of my remarks about the problems of the River Mersey and one way of perhaps tackling unemployment in our area. I suggest that the construction of the Mersey barrage would help to assist jobless people in Merseyside and also be part of a campaign to clean up the Mersey and turn it into a resource for the people of our conurbation.
I want to use the opportunity of today's Adjournment debate to focus the attention of the House on the effect of the Goverment's economic policies, specifically on the city of Liverpool. Obviously, I shall talk about what the city can do for itself, but my primary purpose is to paint a picture for the House, and I intend to divide my remarks into four parts.
First, I shall outline the general effects of the Government's economic policy and will contend that it totally fails to address itself to the deep-seated problems of cities such as mine. Secondly, I shall fill in the detail on the canvas, placing before the House figures which demonstrate how Government policies have specifically affected Liverpool. Thirdly, I want to say something about the immediate implications of the policies. Finally, I want to put some proposals to the Minister, and I hope that she will be able to respond to them.
I shall begin with the broad thrust of the Government's economic policy. Within the past couple of weeks the House has had a chance to consider the Government's White Paper on public expenditure and the Budget. The 500,000 citizens of Liverpool awaited the Chancellor's Budget statement with great expectations. As the pundits raked over the entrails during the run-up to the Budget announcement, many commentators predicted that extra resources would be made available to fight poverty or to combat mass unemployment. The commentators, like the citizens of Liverpool, were badly disappointed. Liverpool people waited in vain as the Chancellor's statement meandered on to hear what he intended to do about unemployment. It was on that criterion alone that the Budget was to be judged in the north of England.
The absence of any proposal of substance led many of us to the conclusion that the Government, and perhaps particularly the Prime Minister, do not care. The right hon. Lady does not seem to care about Liverpool or about the unemployed generally. It is not that the people of Liverpool or I blame her for every person who has become unemployed, although one person has become unemployed every minute of every day since the Government were elected in 1979. It is not even that we blame her for everything that is wrong in Liverpool or Britain. However, people do blame her for not caring. Liverpool seems to be treated like some sort of distant outpost of the empire—out of sight, out of mind. If the Prime Minister occasionally came to see for herself the heartbreak which her policies have created, I do not believe that it would leave even the hardest-hearted person unmoved.
Last week the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had certain choices. They could either do something about unemployment, or cut taxes, in this case by 1p in the pound. She chose to cut taxes, and we are confidently told

that the £1 billion give-away is the prelude to a further bonanza of between £4 billion and £5 billion next year, reducing the standard rate to 25p in the pound.
In examining the choice that the Prime Minister made, it is evident once again that unemployment has been given a low priority. She could have used that £1 billion to create thousands of construction jobs or to cut by 10 per cent. the national insurance contribution that employers pay. Either way, it would have created jobs. If the Prime Minister cares, she could have used that £1 billion to improve on the 40p increase coming to pensioners in July, or to help pay their fuel bills after the shivering cold winter. She could have used that £1 billion to fight poverty and create a fairer Britain. Instead, she gave it all away, just like she has frittered away the £30 billion oil revenue that has come into our country's coffers over the past six years. That is money which should have been used to invest in Britain's future.
Our economy under the Government has been run rather like a giant jumble sale, where everything must go. National assets, resources and companies such as Westland, Land Rover and British Leyland—some £7 billion of national assets—have been flogged off at knock-down prices in the past five years. Another £14 billion worth is earmarked for similar treatment between now and 1989.
Notwithstanding the morality of such policies, perhaps my complaint about the economic thrust would be lessened if I could see any evidence that this country's considerable resources were being reinvested to create a happier and more prosperous Britain. However, popular capitalism, as it has come to be known, which presumably implies that everybody should have a stake, is simply not available or relevant to the unemployed, the poor, the powerless or the alienated in our inner cities. Deliberately encouraging people to care for number one and abandon their concern for others deepens the divisions in Britain.
Another aspect of the Government's general economic approach as it affects Liverpool deeply troubles me. It concerns the social and economic cost of leaving so many people without work. In the United Kingdom, in 1986, it is estimated that it will cost some £23 billion to keep 3·4 million people out of work. The bill comes to £2·5 billion on Merseyside alone. Apart from the personal trauma which being unemployed causes anyone who loses his job, the waste of resources is self-evident. This year, we will spend as a nation three times more on social security than on education, ten times more than on law and order and transport, three times more than on health, and seven times more than on housing or creating jobs. That is popular capitalism in action.
The social consequences of unemployment are also enormous. To realise that one has only to look at the crime rate in areas of mass unemployment. In Liverpool, one crime takes place very three minutes and half the crimes are committed by unemployed young people. Thousands of young people have filled their empty lives with the quick fix of the heroin pusher, others have committed suicide, and yet others have been made easy cannon fodder for Derek Hatton's Militants. It is in that context that the Government's economic policies must be judged. It is a picture which serves to underline the sheer irrelevance of tax cuts when so many other priorities were waiting to be tackled.
Turning from the general picture, I said that I would paint some detail on to the canvas. Nine hundred years


ago, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book as a survey of the state of the nation. It revealed a divided nation. The survey was taken in the aftermath of William's campaign to break the spirit of the dissidents and rebels of the north. After that, he was also to be known as the harrier of the north. The Domesday Book reveals an economy that was ruthlessly destroyed in order to create fear and subservience among the citizens.
There are clearly some parallels which could be drawn with today. Unemployment in the north has been used as a way of keeping the people down, of creating a climate of fear. Jobs have been destroyed, often quite needlessly, all in the name of political dogma, and, to some extent, because of the Prime Minister's personal vanity. It is now six years since the Prime Minister said that she hoped that unemployment would not hit 2·5 million. It was in the same year that she correctly observed that poverty, wherever, it exists, is the enemy of stability. Today 3·4 million people are jobless. In cities like Liverpool political stability has been ruptured, partly thanks to the abdication by the Government of their responsibility for the welfare of their citizens.
Today, there are a phenomenal 107,891 Liverpool people on the dole—one in five—comprising 78,321 men and 29,570 women. We should look a little more closely at the profile of those who are unemployed. Among young people, the prospects of getting a job are negligible. A staggering 42,000 under the age of 24 are without work, and there is a youth unemployment rate of 39 per cent.
People are also being consigned to the dole for much longer periods—almost indefinite periods in some cases. Whereas, in 1979, 37 per cent. of unemployment was for more than a year's duration, by 1985 that figure had risen to 53 per cent. The continuing massive level of unemployment and the length of unemployment inevitably have cumulative effects on personal incomes and social conditions in the city generally. The loss of jobs, more part-time work and a growing proportion of female employment is leading to a relative decline in income levels. By way of example, in 1981, 28 per cent. of children in the city received free school meals. By last year, the proportion was over 50 per cent.
Compounding Liverpool's unemployment problem has been the huge loss of population. This should serve as a warning to those who prescribe the purchase of bicycle clips as a way of solving unemployment. People have been leaving Liverpool hand over fist, and look where it has left us. Liverpool has lost a third of its population in the last 25 years. Between 1966 and 1971 we lost people at the rate of 22,000 a year. Between 1971 and 1981 they left at the rate of 8,740 a year. Over the last five years they have left at the rate of 6,500 a year. This has bled the city of ratepayers, self-starters and entrepreneurs.
There are also proportionately more people in vulnerable groups. The growth in pensioner households, the over-80s—the fastest growing group in the city—single parents, the unemployed and the permanently sick place impossible demands on the local authority's reduced resources and on its services. The sombre and chilling reality for Liverpool is that, if job losses do not slow down, migration will again increase as the more mobile seek job opportunities elsewhere. This will simply further compound Liverpool's problems and turn it into a ghost town.
It is to this change in Liverpool's demography that the Government must address themselves. Liverpool, 1986, is not Liverpool, 1971. In 1971, 42·1 per cent. of the total population were employed and 4·5 per cent. were unemployed. By 1985 that had changed to 34 per cent. being employed, with 12·7 per cent. of the total population being unemployed. This meant that 20 per cent. of the total employable work force were out of work.
Other things have changed, too. During the same period the number of children has fallen by a third. In 1971 they comprised a quarter of the population. In 1985 they comprised only a fifth. During the same period the number of retired people rose from 13·6 to 17·8 per cent. It is in this context of desperate need and changed circumstances that the Government's economic policies must be judged. It is in this context of a dole queue which has doubled between 1971 and 1981 that the House must judge the relevance or sense of the Government's present economic policies.
I said that I would turn to a third area. This concerns the immediate implications of Government policies in Liverpool. Since 1979, the Government have cut some £285 million of rate support grant. In addition, we have lost £30 million from higher education, £98 million in housing subsidies and £150 million from the housing programme. During the last two years the city council has destroyed a perfectly good case in pleading for a reversal of this disastrous national policy by hurtling the city and its citizens towards chaos at each and every opportunity. Derek Hatton has played right into the Prime Minister's hands.
The latest damning indictment of Militant Labour's tactics was published only yesterday in a 47-page report by Mr. Tim McMahon, the district auditor. He says that he has never seen an administration act as irresponsibly as this one has done. The council has undoubtedly damaged Liverpool's reputation to the point where some constituents have told me that they are ashamed even to admit to outsiders that they come from a city of which its citizens have been traditionally proud.
At midnight on 2 April, if there is no appeal by the 48 Labour councillors who have been disqualified from public office because of the reckless way in which they have run the city, the city's affairs will be in the hands of sensible people: Liberals, sensible members of the Labour party and Conservatives. I hope that they will unite to give the city the leadership that it deserves, but they will need resources. There is an immediate deficit of £37 million to be faced.
I must warn the Government that there is no point in sending emissaries to Sir Trevor Jones, the leader of the Liberal group, telling him to make cuts by sacking the work force. During the years that we were in control, we never made a single person compulsorily redundant, and we do not intend to start now. Sacking people in Liverpool will simply lead to social disorder on a grand scale. What is needed is a sensitive and humanitarian response, or we will create the climate for Militant to whip up more bitterness, hatred and sectarian discord.
May I also plead with the Government that if the councillors decide to appeal, the Lord Chancellor has a duty to ensure that those appeals are heard as rapidly as possible, so that this long-running saga may be quickly brought to an end.
The final part of my remarks are concerned with positive proposals, which I hope the Minister will


examine. First, after the disappearance of the Merseyside county council as an umbrella organisation, a number of useful initiatives could disappear. I hope that the Government will accept some responsibility for that. Particularly, I refer, as I did at the outset of my remarks, to the construction of the Mersey barrage. If a barrage were created across the Mersey, not only would it impound the Mersey and create massive recreational facilities, but it would create a third of the electricity requirements of the area and a new deep sea water facility for berthing oceangoing vessels in the mouth of the Mersey. It would also create a massive number of jobs in the construction industry. It would be a symbol of hope for the people of Liverpool.
Archbishop Warlock, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, said at a civic service just two weeks ago:
Just at this time our city and much of the County lies wounded. But for the spirit of the people it might well be hard to maintain hope. If we are to counter what we believe to be a false image of our part of the country, we must not only pick ourselves up but as one body work together to renew the life and activity of a people who brought greatness to Merseyside. There are new opportunities, new challenges to be faced: new goals to be won…Perhaps the new much-discussed Mersey Barrage is the symbol we need. A renewed role for the old Mersey. New jobs. Improved environment. A new source of energy for ourselves and for many more throughout our land.
The barrage would also be a symbol of partnership between private and public enterprise. I hope it is one that the Government will back.
I hope that the Minister will also say a word or two about the possibility of moving the intervention board headquarters from Reading to Liverpool. I know that the Government are considering this proposition and that bids have been put in by Manchester Conservative Members of Parliament to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I have written to him on this question this week, and I hope that we will be given some news.
I hope also that when the franchise for Granada Television in the north of England is renewed, the Minister will consider splitting the franchise and creating a new television station based on Merseyside. That would help to create many jobs in the entertainment industry. Liverpool is famous for its comedians—although we never thought that we would see them running the city council—and for its musicians, actors, playwrights and poets. A new television station would help to improve Merseyside's image. Liverpool people as well as the Minister should address their minds to the point that, unless we improve the image of our conurbation, we cannot hope to bring new enterprise to the area.
With the disappearance of the county council there will be a need for a regional development agency, along the lines of the Scottish model, and for a tourist board. We should look at the ways in which we support the local free port, which has been very successful. Last year more than £17 million of work came through the free port. If changes in the operation of VAT were made in the free port, more business would be attracted.
Voluntary organisations, which create much work in Liverpool, are in extreme difficulty because of funding cuts. The local council has been intransigent in assuming the responsibilities previously held by the county councils. Although I am grateful to Lord Elton for the help that he

has given and for meeting the groups that I have taken to see him, I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will say more about this matter.
In conclusion, I hope that, in the longer term, we will see a complete reversal of the Government's damaging economic policies. I very much hope that the Chancellor will take the opportunity in his autumn statement to redress some of the grievances that I have mentioned—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I hope the hon. Member appreciates that this debate should finish at 1.30 pm. If he wants the Under-Secretary of State to reply, he should conclude quickly.

Mr. Alton: I was on my last sentence, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did say, "In conclusion." I hope that the Chancellor in his autumn statement will redress some of the grievances that I have mentioned and use some of the moneys in the unusually large Contingency Fund to tackle the nation's decaying infrastructure and especially the problems of Liverpool.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Angela Rumbold): I shall respond as briefly as I can to the important subject raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). In his opening remarks he attacked the Government for their economic policies. I was somewhat surprised to learn of his view and to see that he totally ignored the realities. There has been a clear recovery of our economy, with 3·5 per cent. more growth, providing the stability and security that will help to overcome many of the difficulties faced by northern cities such as Liverpool. I shall come to the hon. Gentleman's point about positive unemployment measures which the Government have taken in the Budget.
On the general points about the north, I should like to point out that local government as a whole, irrespective of its political control, can take up the advantages of Government initiatives—Newcastle, for example, has managed to take advantage of them—and provide the infrastructure for those cities, which have undoubtedly suffered with the disappearance of traditional businesses and industries, but which have now begun to regenerate themselves with great assistance from the Government. Liverpool, alas, did not take advantage of those Government initiatives, because of the curious leadership on the council. To a certain extent, therefore, it is Liverpool's fault that much of what could have been done to help the Liverpool people, for whom all of us have great sympathy, was ignored.
The hon. Member for Mossley Hill referred to a great deal of money which should have gone to Liverpool council and could have helped the city to make a better recovery. I must point out that the city could always have earned more money if there had been sensible planning and if it had used the efficient methods of running local government used by many councils. For example, in 1985–86, Liverpool city council had a budget of £265 million, which led to the city being rate capped. Under these proposals, the city was given a grant of only £30 million. Because the council had to bring its budget down to £222 million, it earned itself an extra £90 million. That happened simply because of the necessity to behave properly. That gave the city a total of £119 million of Government grant, which was much better than anything the councillors had originally proposed.
I understand that the district auditor's report has just been sent to the council. The hon. Member for Mossley Hill will appreciate that that is a matter between the district auditor and the councillors. We understand that it is a private report. We shall be extremely interested to see what it says and to note the council's response.
At the heart of the Government's policies relating directly to Liverpool is a recognition of the fact that for many years Liverpool's economy has been in decline. We have believed that to achieve a wider regeneration of the area priority must be given to creating a climate in which the private sector is encouraged to grow. That will enable the spirit of enterprise and innovation to flourish, in just the same way as I have mentioned that it has and can flourish in other cities in the north. The Government's policies have therefore been geared to provide the means for improving the quality of the local environment, living conditions, and working skills of people. In consequence, that should make the area more attractive to local entrepreneurs and private investors as a place to develop and expand their businesses, and I could give many examples where that has happened.
The hon. Member for Mossley Hill is aware that Liverpool, as a development area, receives the highest level of Government support when firms decide to move in or to expand their businesses in that area. It receives a high allocation of funds from the Manpower Services Commission's programmes which are aimed at youth training, the community programme and the enterprise allowance scheme. It is a partnership authority under the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978, receiving a high level of aid from the Department's urban programme. Within its area there is an urban development corporation geared to regenerating extensive areas of Liverpool dockland and the enterprise zone at Speke designated in 1981 to encourage new industrial and commercial development. As the hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned, there is a free port, which, I am glad to hear, he is happy to encourage in its operation. Much has been attempted to assist and underpin the decline in Liverpool.
A massive £24 million was committed through the urban programme alone. As the hon. Gentleman said, the city council chose, unwisely in the Government's view, not to direct this money towards economic and industrial regeneration. I do not want to dwell on the council's failures. I should like to say, however, that it is important to recognise that the Government have, through their urban programme, provided a unique opportunity for job creation and economic development. Unfortunately, so far, the council has refused to take up that opportunity.
Liverpool has benefited from the Government's policy of targeting derelict land grant towards sites with hard after-uses, particularly in industrial and commercial development. Some £8·5 million has been spent since 1983 to reclaim sites for industry and generally to improve the quality of the environment, and to encourage investors into the area. No doubt the hon. Gentleman knows that one of the most spectacular examples of that occurred within his constituency, at Wavertree.
The hon. Gentleman will know that in 1981 the Government established the Merseyside development corporation to regenerate no fewer than 865 acres of massively derelict and disused dockland at the heart of the area. It was recognised from the outset that substantial

public funding would be required to achieve the corporation's objectives. All in all, capital expenditure so far in Liverpool has totalled £97 million.
I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the corporation successfully mounted the first ever international garden festival to be held in this country. It attracted about 3·3 million visitors, and its great success brought new confidence to the area. I hope that that will continue to operate successfully under the private sector development initiative.
The co-operation of Government Departments in the way that I have said has also produced other new developments. For example, nine information technology centres, four commercial business centres, and three small firms workshops have been set up in the wider Merseyside area, all designed to assist in the training of people, particularly in new technology.
Most recently, as the hon. Gentleman will know, the task force has been encouraging the establishment of job clubs, which are aimed specifically at helping the longterm unemployed to find work. About 11 such centres are to be established in Liverpool this year.
I should like to consider some of the problems that have been raised about unemployment. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Government place great emphasis on the need to raise the level of skills and provide training and retraining facilities for both youngsters and adults in Liverpool. In 1985–86, 12,000 places will have been filled on youth and adult training schemes. Places have been provided under the community programme and the voluntary project programme, and support for initiative and enterprise has been given by the enterprise alliance scheme. So far, over 300 people have taken advantage of that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Budget proposals last week included further initiatives for training under the community programme, many of which I hope and trust will find support in the city of Liverpool.
All those policies for Liverpool, or indeed anywhere else, are not just about providing finance, but about stimulating ideas, organisation and co-operation for new initiatives. That is what the Merseyside task force has been doing. There are no easy answers. The hon. Gentleman referred to population losses. I believe that in many ways they show the deep-rooted failure of the city council to address itself to the assistance made available to it by the Government and to tackle sensibly and efficiently the underlying problems that Liverpool faces simply through the decline of industry.
Although there are no quick or easy answers, I have outlined some of the measures that the Government have taken and which I believe are now beginning to show signs of making an impact in restoring confidence. Any alternatives involving greater sums of money would be successful in the long term only if they worked in co-operation with the private sector. The London docklands experience has given much weight to the argument that Government investment in any great city such as Liverpool will benefit the people living there only if the private sector has the confidence to add much larger sums. Newcastle, again, is a good example of the help that such initiatives can provide.
I am afraid that the attitude of Liverpool city council has not been helpful in contributing to and supporting this effort. Unfortunately, its approach has been both narrow and municipal, it has largely ignored the possibilities of the private and voluntary sectors, and it has been very


wasteful of resources. It would have done better to interest itself in developments such as housing co-operatives to ensure that money was spent greatly to the benefit of people living in Liverpool, rather than adopting what I regard as a rather narrow and intransigent approach.
The previous Liberal administration must also take some responsibility for perhaps failing to tackle the inefficient delivery of many basic council services, especially in housing. I hope that the new views which now prevail will assist in that respect.
I am glad that the city has now decided to act sensibly and to set a rate for 1986–87. It is well known that rates are an important factor in determining the location and success of businesses. Rate capping has prevented the worst excesses of profligate authorities, but there can be no place for inefficiency or poor management in the delivery of local authority services in an area fighting for its economic life. Like any other authority, Liverpool must now live within its means if it is to make significant progress towards recovery.
I cannot speculate on which party will take office in Liverpool or who will be leader of the city council after the local elections, but any new council will clearly have a hard task to put right the problems of the past and will face some of the same constraints as the present council. For instance, the rate limit for next year has already been debated and approved by the House. I can say, however, that if there is a change of leadership the Government will look forward to working with a council which has a real desire to make progress in partnership with the Government towards real improvements for the people of the city of Liverpool.
It is untrue to say that the Government do not care about the way in which the people of Liverpool have to live. I believe that much is due to the fact that the city council has brought only financial and economic harm to the city in past years. The Government will certainly find it easier to work with a council which is prepared to use all the available resources to promote the well-being of the city. We have urged that course on the present council, but, alas, to no avail.
Finally, I should like briefly to refer to the positive points that the hon. Gentleman made.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the Minister that we are now eating into the time allocated for the next debate and taking the time allocated to other hon. Members.

Mrs. Rumbold: I am very well aware of that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and will finish in less than a minute. I accept the hon. Gentleman's positive suggestions about specific areas in which the Government and a responsible city council could encourage the regeneration of the area.

Air Safety

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: I declare an interest as deputy chairman of the all-party air safety group.
Nineteen eighty-five was the worst year ever for civil aviation fatalities throughout the world. A total of 1,984 people were killed in major airline accidents. That is a horrifying number, yet in percentage terms those fatalities represent considerably fewer than 1 per cent. of passengers carried by the world's airlines. That figure shows the underlying safety of flying. Bearing in mind the size and complexity of a modern airliner, those figures speak volumes for the reliability and efficiency of airliners. Yet, because of those accidents, one must admit that an unease has crept into the minds of many would-be air travellers. I believe that that unease is founded on the fact that so many of the deaths seem to result from circumstances well within existing technology and that have caused other fatal injuries over the years.
The argument runs thus: if those risks were known already, why had nothing been done to eliminate them? What is more, the defence that the risk was too slight to warrant the expenditure on the necessary safety precautions is not much comfort to the bereaved or to those who have lain in hospital as a result of such accidents. They may fairly argue that if an airline says that it takes good care of you it means what it says, as it does when it says that it puts people first, or talks of its efficiency. People may presume that when an airline boasts about its passenger seats it is implying that it combines strength with comfort and design—not that, too often, they are 10g seats in a 20g aircraft for a 40g man, or, in other words, that they are not stressed for the strains with which they may have to deal.
Last but by no means least, there is a general assumption that, as weaknesses or faults are discovered by airlines, these faults are notified to some central authority that, after consultation with the aircraft makers, issues advice to all operators of that aeroplane. Sadly, almost all those assumptions are mistaken. Certainly airlines care about carrying passengers. That is why they exist. However, whether they are as safety-conscious as they could be depends on one's expectations and on the amount that airline passengers are prepared to pay for increased safety.
In fact, airline advertisements never refer to safety. No matter from which country the company flies, the emphasis is on punctuality, good service, comfort, food and very often the good looks of the air hostesses. There is virtually never any emphasis on safety. It may be that airlines do not believe that safety is a sales feature. Perhaps they wish to give the impression that flying is so intrinsically safe that safety may be taken for granted. As I have said, flying is remarkably safe. It is 16 times safer today than it was in 1950. However, whereas in 1984 the odds on being killed in a civil air crash were one in 3·7 million, in 1985 those odds had shortened to one in 600,000 passengers carried.
More worrying still are the number of near misses reported, which must give cause for concern because of their possible consequences if they had become accidents.
It is not easy to pinpoint the reasons for increased accidents and fatalities because they have such a wide


variety of causes and characteristics. We can only say that every nation operating an airline has a responsibility—as do the manufacturers, the engine makers and the component suppliers. They, in turn, must follow the rules laid down by the national and international safety authorities, of which the Federal Aviation Administration in America and our Civil Aviation Authority are among the better known. It is to those bodies and to the International Civil Aviation Organisation that we must turn to discover the regulations and how they are administered.
ICAO possesses the accident investigation group, which was described to me recently as having
no money and no teeth.
It seeks to update safety regulations on an international basis, but it is often slow to act. When my hon. Friend the Minister replies perhaps he will tell me whether the ICAO air navigation commission has yet updated the regulations relating to co-ordination between civil and military authorities, and to interception, following the shooting down of the Korean Boeing 747 by Russian fighters over the Sea of Japan in 1983.
Until the time of that disaster there was no ICAO requirement for civil aircraft to have the VHF international distress frequency selected at all times. That means that, if a civil aircraft wanders off course and is intercepted, radio contact can be made by the interceptor aircraft.
The Korean 747 was off course for three hours, but, apparently, was unaware of the interception that had been made by the Russian aircraft until it was too late. Perhaps my hon. Friend will tell me that the position is now different and that the ICAO regulations have been updated. If so, I am unaware of it. The long intervals that appear to take place in the updating of international safety regulations gives me considerable cause for concern.
Nearer home, how does the CAA measure up as a watchdog for our air safety? The main criticism that I have heard of it is that it reacts after the event because it possesses neither a research centre nor the funds to carry out research into safety. It is certainly true that too often it follows the American FAA or US National Transportation Safety Board in what they do. While the FAA introduced its fire resistance standard for aircraft passenger seats in October 1984, for example, the CAA introduced its regulations in June 1985 and updated them in January 1986, admittedly to a higher standard.
One cannot help feeling that that updating took place because of the dreadful fire disaster at Manchester airport last August when 55 people died in a British Airways Boeing 737 while it was still on the ground. Having seen the burnt-out fuselage of that aircraft, I can only say that it is a miracle that anyone escaped alive, especially as the interior furnishings and lockers were completely destroyed by the fire, as were most of the seats. Passengers using the mid-fuselage emergency exit found that they had to clamber across three seats to reach those exits, or, if they were in the forward part of the cabin, to pass one at a time through a narrow space between the forward galleys, only to discover that one of the forward exit doors had jammed shut for precious seconds which might have saved lives.
When I saw the fuselage by courtesy of the air accident investigation branch, I was told that normally evacuation tests on aircraft require that only 50 per cent. of emergency exists needed to be open to prove that they were satisfactory. Needless to say, the front exit doors had not been included in that test.
I make those points, not to anticipate the findings of the inquest which is soon to be held on that crash or the inquiry which will be held later this year, but because those hazards could have been anticipated. The tragic effect of fire in an airliner cabin is well known, just as it is known that most passengers die from the hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide fumes given off by burning polyurethane seats. But it is only now that we are demanding fire blocking materials. By the same token, evacuation procedures using a mix of exits could have been introduced so that all the exits are tested on British civil airlines. And what about the galleys on the 737? They should have been recognised for what they are, a barrier to evacuation.
All this is hindsight, but so too are the CAA regulations of January 1986 which now contain instructions on how to improve certain mid-cabin emergency exits and on how to provide floor level emergency escape path lighting. They also contain a number of other improvements, but what else should we be looking at? What about the blocked off over-wing exits on the 747? What about the large bits that regularly fall off aircraft in Berkshire after aircraft have taken off from London airport? No airline ever seems to claim those bits. What about the strength of passenger seats, the benefits of shoulder and lap straps rather than seat belts, and overhead lockers that are less flammable and have burst-proof locks to spare passengers a torrent of heavy objects falling on their heads in an accident? The list is long.
In 1982 the magazine Flight, under the heading "1,850 needless crash victims", commented that a recent report on cabin safety in large transport aircraft prepared by the United States National Transportation Safety Board showed that
the authorities have been almost asleep on the question of crash forces in cabin safety for years.
That is quite an indictment. Other questions spring to mind about the safety of operating large twin-engined aircraft like the Airbus over long stretches of sea. That issue is facing us at the moment and not enough has been said about it, either by the CAA or by the Department of Transport. Cracks were recently discovered in the fuselages of aging jumbo jets and the CAA is following, and admitting that it is following, the directives issued by the Federal Aviation Administration.
All these matters deserve research and consideration. When he gave the Brancker memorial lecture in February, Sir John Dent, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, said:
It is not the job of the CAA to sponsor research on aviation development and advances in technology in the field. That is the job of aircraft manufacturers, the avionics industry and the materials industry, but it is our job to understand the safety implications of developments in technology and use and to be able to set meaningful safety standards and tests. It used to be that the Government research establishments were fully available for research but economic stringency and perhaps some divergence of civil and defence research have largely closed off those resources. The situation is worrying, not least because our influence in international circles is directly dependent on our knowledge of and contribution to aviation safety.
His words are timely and important if we want air safety to be given its proper priority. One solution would be to fund the CAA and the accident investigation branch so that they could emulate the wider roles of the FAA and the NTSB in America. Such a solution would probably be both wasteful of resources and administratively unworkable on the scale we could afford.
Some suggest that the Airworthiness Requirements Board could fulfil the role, but it is something of a part-time body and scarcely suitable. Thus, one is drawn to the conclusion that a new body is needed standing apart from the CAA, the AAIB and the ARB but working closely with them. In effect, I am suggesting a national aviation safety centre. If such a centre was created, its obvious home would seem to be the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield. As I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, Cranfield has a long and distinguished record in aviation research. Its work on all aspects of aircraft design, manufacture and operation is recognised internationally. I suggest that it could fulfil the role of an aviation safety centre and give back to the United Kingdom the research facility to invest in air safety before the event, which must be to the benefit of the tens of millions of air passengers who fly in and out of the United Kingdom every year and the hundreds of millions of passengers who fly internationally.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Michael Spicer): I am sure that the House will be extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. McNair-Wilson) for having raised the issue of air safety. As my hon. Friend knows, responsibility for civil aviation rests by statute with the Civil Aviation Authority. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State appoints the chairman of the authority and the members of its board and he must satisfy himself that the authority is discharging properly the various responsibilities which Parliament has entrusted to the CAA to ensure safety. However, neither my right hon. Friend nor I must seek to usurp the authority's responsibilities.
I am sure that the House will be the first to recognise that all the expertise in this crucial area lies with the authority, not with politicians and their officials. Not that many years ago, before the authority was set up, responsibility was divided between a number of bodies. Not surprisingly, this division of responsibility was not entirely satisfactory, so much so that the Edwards committee, which examined these matters extremely carefully in producing its report on British air transport in the 1970s, found:
A situation has arisen in which each authority has felt obliged to act only within its own limited field of responsibility.
The committee concluded that it would be better to create conditions which guarded against that happening. It saw advantage in a pooling of responsibilities and information on safety.
Almost inevitably, as a result of its own logic, the committee was driven to recommend the formation of the Civil Aviation Authority, with a unified responsibility for safety matters. I believe that that logic still holds true today. The authority has a spectrum of safety responsibilities. Its safety services group has nearly 700 staff. Its role is to set standards and to satisfy itself that airlines are competent, that Britain's airports and aerodromes are safe, that pilots are properly trained and medically fit, and that aircraft are designed, built and maintained to the highest standards.
The duty of the national air traffic services is to ensure that aircraft can fly safely in Britain's crowded air space.

It supplies air traffic control services, licenses controllers and inspects aerodromes to ensure that proper standards are maintained.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: rose——

Mr. Spicer: I shall give way to my hon. Friend, but I ask him to understand that I am under some pressure because of the timing of debates.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: It seems that what my hon. Friend says may be true of the CAA, but how can it be an effective safety regulator if it cannot research into the possible causes of future accidents?

Mr. Spicer: If my hon. Friend gives me the opportunity, and if the House will bear with me—I suspect that I shall stretch the time that has been alloted for this debate—I shall address myself directly to that issue.
The CAA's concerns for safety extend beyond the purely domestic. It maintains the closest contact with regulatory authorities overseas and plays a major role in the counsels of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. In my direct experience, the ICAO can move swiftly on occasions. I have in mind especially its reaction and response recently to aviation security. In direct response to my hon. Friend's question, the ICAO has agreed an amendment to the Chicago convention to cover the military interception of civil aircraft. The amendment needs to be ratified by a sufficient number of states if it is to be brought into force. A recurring problem stems from the need for mutual and international co-operation within the ICAO. I do not see, however, how we can overcome the need for compliance by member states.
My hon. Friend fears that international co-operation is at a low ebb and of a low quality. Sir John Dent, the authority's chairman, was right to voice his worries about some recent developments. Clearly the CAA and the Government must work to ensure that the traditional international spirit of co-operation in aviation safety matters is maintained, but we should not over-dramatise the problem.
Close co-operation is still the norm, not the exception. for example, there is a close relationship between all the major European agencies on joint airworthiness standards. Contact between the CAA and the FAA in the United States, following the Manchester disaster to which my hon. Friend referred, took place almost by the hour. As my hon. Friend will know, personnel from the FAA are permanently in Britain and, similarly, CAA personnel stay with the FAA.
My hon. Friend has also expressed concern about the sealing of overwing emergency exits on Boeing 747s. In response to that, the FAA organised, at the CAA's request, an evacuation test using a British Airways crew. I can report that the 90-second evacuation standard was met.

Mr. Robert Hughes: With or without plimsolls?

Mr. Spicer: I suspect that that point was well taken on board before that evacuation. I am not sure, but I should be surprised if, after all the publicity, plimsolls were worn on this occasion. However, that would need to be confirmed.
Nevertheless, we must try, if only by the example set by the CAA, to ensure that some of the difficulties which have arisen recently do not recur.
My hon. Friend has asked about safety research. As he will know, safety research is currently funded by a combination of Government Departments, the CAA and the manufacturing and airline industries. It may be that the contribution from the industry will have to increase in the future. We are currently considering the whole question with the CAA and the Department of Trade and Industry. We shall certainly take into account the real concerns that my hon. Friend has expressed today and the points that he has raised in that context.
I suspect that it will be no solution simply to fund research programmes carried out by an independent body. It has been suggested that the Government should give Cranfield Institute of Aviation Research £2 million for unsponsored research. That would not help for at least two reasons. First, if there is a funding problem, it is no solution simply to say that the Government can solve it by giving a relatively small sum to one particular institution. My hon. Friend will probably accept that what is needed is a long-term viable solution. But, more importantly, research into aviation safety is co-ordinated by the Civil Aviation Research and Development Board.
We must avoid the danger of fragmenting the United Kingdom's research effort and in the process getting priorities wrong. It would be even less attractive to expect a body such as the Cranfield institute to devise or even recommend standards for safety, as my hon. Friend rather ingeniously suggested this afternoon.
As I have already mentioned, the strength of the CAA as a regulator of safety lies in the integration within one authority of responsibility for all the different areas of safety. We simply cannot begin to strip out certain areas and give them to some other body, however responsible or expert it may be. Not only would the authority begin to lose international credibility; we would also return inevitably to the days of the 1960s and before when too many organisations had responsibilities for safety questions. The Edwards report warned of the problems of divided responsibility. It gave us the solution in the form of the CAA, and that solution has worked well. It would be a serious mistake to begin to unpick the authority's role in safety matters.
It is, of course, true that no single body can carry out safety research on its own. No one has all the expertise. The CAA draws on research carried out in a number of centres, both here and overseas, in setting standards. But experience worldwide has shown that separating the setting of standards from their enforcement is a mistake.
The test of whether the present arrangements work, and of whether the CAA has properly discharged its responsibilities, lies in the safety record of civil aviation in this country. If we look at the general safety record over the past decade, the picture is reassuring, although we and the CAA must, as has been rightly insisted upon by hon. Members, guard against complacency. As my hon. Friend has said, 1985 was a bad year. But, as I think he conceded, in only three years in the previous decade were there fatal accidents involving fixed-wing aircraft of over 2,300 kg on the British register, carrying passengers for public transport. The record for passenger public transport operations involving helicopters was almost equally good, despite the harsh North sea environment in which so many services operate.
During the same period, the incidence of risk-bearing air misses involving civil aircraft more than halved, although the skies over the United Kingdom have become more and more crowded. The record is a good one, but, as I have said, we cannot risk complacency. That is why the CAA acted so swiftly after the tragic events at Manchester. Within hours of the accident, all similarly engined aircraft on the British register were subject to new inspection criteria and, where necessary, were grounded until safety checks had been completed. As evidence has emerged from the accident investigation, the authority has acted swiftly to introduce new standards for emergency exits and escape route markings. New regulations dealing with the fire resistance of seats were introduced three months before the accident. The authority has acted with the same speed and good sense over the question of cracks in Boeing 747s.
Neither the authority nor Parliament can ever take lightly the safety of aviation in this country. The standards of safety which the CAA demands may be the best achievable today, but it can and does strive to see how those standards can be improved. Parliament made a wise decision when it brought within one authority the responsibility for all the many aspects of safety regulations. We must not disturb that arrangement either by seeking to take away from the CAA matters in which it, and it alone, is expert, or by seeking to undermine its authority in other ways. It is right that we should all be concerned to ensure that the CAA promotes and maintains the highest safety standards. The record clearly shows that the authority has done that, and that where necessary it will act swiftly to remedy problems that unexpectedly come to light. However, I repeat that my hon. Friend has done us a great service by bringing this issue before us today.

Elderly People (Residential Care)

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Although I am a Scottish Member of Parliament, most of my speech will be devoted to the problem of residential care for the elderly in England.
However, I shall first comment briefly on the situation in Scotland. Recent statistics from the House of Commons Library show that the regulation system in Scotland is not as sophisticated as that in England. The regularly produced statistics do not distinguish private homes from other non-local authority homes. They imply that the expansion of the private sector has not been as marked in Scotland as it has been in England. In 1979, there were 176 such private homes, whereas in 1984, the latest year for which figures are available, there were 193. That is a 10 per cent. increase. I do not know the reasons for that. In the same period, the increase in England was 100 per cent. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) has just informed me that the Tory-controlled Grampian regional authority has decided that it will build no further homes for the elderly in Scotland.
Generally, elderly people are more dependent than others on social services such as the National Health Service and community services provided by local councils such as home helps and sheltered housing. Most retirement pensioners have to struggle for existence with the help of supplementary benefit because the basic pension is so inadequate.
One basic requirement for elderly people is clean, comfortable and warm living accommodation at rents or charges they can pay without financial worry. Most old folk prefer their own independent accommodation where they can enjoy privacy and the possession of their own furniture and objects of sentimental value. The next best is sheltered housing provided, in the main, by the local council, with qualified staff, attendants, constant supervision and provision for privacy. I have had an exciting and moving experience of such provision in my constituency. It is organised by the Labour-controlled Fife authority.
Throughout the country there is a mix of provision by local councils—which are non-profit making—voluntary bodies and private, profit-making institutions. The community at large has an obligation to ensure that old folk and other vulnerable people, such as the mentally or physically disabled, are properly cared for by the community, paid for by the community. The private, profit-making sector has only a limited role.
I shall put some facts and figures on the record. Written answers to questions tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) on 2 March 1984, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) on 26 July 1984, indicate the trend. My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley asked for information on the provision of private and voluntary homes for the elderly since 1979 in the various regions in England and Wales. I shall not put all the figures on record, but I think that I should mention a few.
The figures cover a geographical stretch from the northeast of England to Devon. In 1979, Tyne and Wear had 32 privately run homes; in 1983, it had 39. West Yorkshire had 57 such homes in 1979, and 96 in 1983. Merseyside

had 55 in 1979, and 101 in 1983. The west midlands had 25 in 1979 and 59 in 1983. Lincolnshire had 20 in 1979, and 44 in 1983. Norfolk had 41 in 1979 and 88 in 1983.
In the south of England the attractions are obvious. It has a milder climate, and a more desirable environment in many other ways. Dorset had 117 private residential homes in 1979 and 196 in 1983. East and West Sussex together had 294 in 1979 and 447 in 1983. Avon had 52 in 1979 and 96 in 1983. Devon had 217 in 1979 and 371 in 1983. If one adds up the figures for all those regions the total number of private residential homes was 910 in 1979 and 1,537 in 1983.
My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham, in a parliamentary question, asked for the local authority provision for March 1984. The total in England showed that there were 2,673 local authority homes, 4,090 in the private sector and 1,152 in the voluntary sector. Roughly half of the homes were provided by local authorities and slightly half the places available were local authority places.
It is worth noting that, in Dorset, which is predominantly Tory-controlled, there are only 37 local authority homes as compared with 215 private homes. In Hampshire, also predominantly Tory-controlled, there are 66 local authority homes and 233 private homes. In the Isle of Wight there are six local authority homes and 42 private homes. In Wiltshire there are 25 local authority homes and 66 private homes and in Somerset there are 27 local authority homes and 73 private homes.
In a written answer on 28 January the Minister said that the number of registered private residential homes in England for the elderly and disabled in March 1983 were 4,509, in March 1984 5,222, and in March 1985 6,443. That is a provisional figure.
On 12 March the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope) initiated a debate on these matters. He made a quite extraordinary claim that the Government have
an excellent record on extending care in the community."—[Official Report, 12 March 1986; Vol. 93, c. 1056.]
The hon. Member cited as evidence the expansion in the national network of private profit-making homes for the old. The hon. Member proceeded to enumerate the many financial problems that inevitably arise from the clash between the desires of the proprietors of these private homes to make profits and the inadequacy of the means of the residents, subsisting, as many do as pensioners, on supplementary benefits.
The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) who replied to that debate sought to make the best of a bad job. He welcomed the rapid growth in the private industry but then stated that, in 1978, 7,000 old folks had been helped by supplementary benefit to pay their fees. In other words the Government augmented the profits of the private owners.
In 1978 the cost to the Exchequer was £6 million. The Under-Secretary went on to state that in 1984 the situation had got out of hand and the cost was £190 million. The Government were pouring public money into the coffers of the private owners. The Minister admitted as much. He admitted that the scheme was open to exploitation and abuse.
An article in the journal Community Care, on 8 March this year, gave examples and stated:


According to one estimate, if you get yourself a property and fill it with 12 elderly residents you have a guaranteed income of £60,000 a year.
The same journal referred later to an organisation called
Care Concern, founded by David Rattray, former deputy director of Denbighshire SSD, whose homes for emotionally disturbed adolescents and the mentally handicapped bring him well over £1 million a year.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham spoke in a debate on these matters on 13 March, she, too, gave examples of what can happen in those private homes. She cited the Inglehurst nursing home in Blackpool, where
the owners engaged in twice-daily drinking sprees, failed to administer drugs safely and fed their residents inadequately, and where there was inadequate staffing and residents were kept in squalor."—[Official Report, 13 March 1986; Vol. 93, c. 1149. ]
Mainly as a result of my hon. Friend's representations, that home was eventually closed, but not before getting £50,000 a year from the DHSS—in other words, £50,000 of taxpayers' money. My hon. Friend also mentioned two cases of fraud by private homes in Kent. She raised those matters with the Government, but to date, apparently, there has been no action.
In the article in Community Care to which I referred, Mr. Dick Clough of the Social Care Association was reported to be worried by the fact that the market in old folks' needs
is one ripe for profit making".
That view was eagerly shared by a private company called Associated Nursing Services Ltd. It was planning to buy Stewart lodge, belonging to Hammersmith and Fulham council, along with the 29 residents whose average age was 88. Only the imminence of a by-election in that area stopped that.
Incidentally, the proposed sale was to have gone through with the support of the Tory and Liberal councillors in that area, and only in the past few days have those people reneged on that because they saw the great disaster that could befall them politically if they went through with that sale. That was an unbelievable act of social irresponsibility. Only public outrage and the imminence of the by-election stopped it.
Another organisation has shown that it fully understands the enormous profits that can be made out of the old folk. A brochure issued by the Investment and Pensions Advisory Service was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham in the debate to which I referred. It refers to investment in old folks' homes as a
lucrative, long-term opportunity for large-scale capital growth.
Under the Government's business expansion scheme, people can get grants of taxpayers' money to engage in that practice. I should be interested to know how much public money has been given out under that scheme to foster that private industry.
The Government have shown clearly that they believe in the private system and in the solution of the problem by private enterprise and privately financed homes; by leaving the problem increasingly to what the Prime Minister describes as caring capitalism, the magic of the market. We should leave it all to the market and the profit motive, and the old people's problems will be solved. There is massive evidence that the Government believe in the increased privatisation of the services, especially the accommodation requirements of our old people.
Handsome profits are being made at the expense of the old, and the taxpayers too, because the Government have

admitted that the DHSS—the taxpayers—were paying £10 million a year to private homes in 1979 and £190 million in 1984. God knows what the figure will be now.
The DHSS coughs up as much as £180 per person per week in a private profit-making home. Therefore, a wee 10-bed home can received £1,800 a week or a little Less than £100,000 a year of taxpayers' money to look after those people. The local authority is responsible for examination and inspection to see that the homes are up to the mark.
While all that has been going on, the local councils have been directed and bullied into spending less and less on residential care and other services such as home helps, which helps to drive the old folks into the private profit-making sector. It is not many years since Professor Galbraith wrote an eloquent book on that philosophy entitled "Public Squalor and Private Affluence". It is interesting that the Minister grins at that. "Private Affluence and Public Squalor" describes what is happening in this area now. By treating all public expenditure, public investment and public services as inefficient, wasteful and bad, hence justifying the curbing of all that is public, the Government are driving people into the private, profit-making sector, whether it be housing, health, education, pensions, social security or, as in this case, old folk's homes.
The social services as we have known them since the war are being strangled by the Government and the Social Security Bill currently before the House underlines that fact. That is why millions of people up and down the country are full of foreboding for the future of the services as we have known them for the past 40 years.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Ray Whitney): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for raising this subject. I am particularly grateful to him for suggesting that he would like to put some facts and figures on record. We have not had any so far and I should like to offer some.
He talked about the social service being strangled. Never, in real terms, has more been spent on personal social services than is being spent today. He talked about the social security budget being destroyed, or whatever words he used. Never, in real terms, has more been spent. Indeed, there has been an increase of over 20 per cent. in real terms, and most of that has gone on an increased number of beneficiaries, including about 800,000 pensioners and increased rates of benefit paid under the social security system.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central spoke about pensioners. He knows, but perhaps as a member of the Opposition he is not prepared to admit, that the state retirement pension is 10 percentage points higher than it was when we came into office. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that a pensioner couple on a supplementary pension now receive £2·96 a week more than they would have done when the hon. Gentleman and his party were in government. That is the measure of the so-called stranglehold of personal social services and retirement pensions to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. They are the facts and figures which must be put on record.
The hon. Gentleman is happy that apparently in Scotland his constituents are denied the choice that is


available in England between local authority provision, voluntary home provision or private provision. He smiles at that, just as I smiled when he quoted Professor Galbraith. It would be difficult to find anyone more exploded as an economic theorist than Professor Galbraith, other than Mr. Marx, to whom the hon. Gentleman may also pay some tribute.
It may have escaped the hon. Gentleman's notice that most people in this country—including I would imagine, the hon. Gentleman's constituents in Fife, Central—prefer a choice. If they have to go into a home, they prefer an opportunity to choose which sort of home they should go into. The hon. Gentleman seems to object to the fact that the Government are prepared to pay, through supplementary benefit, the scale of fees that are available. For those who live in homes for the elderly, we are prepared to pay £120 a week. For those in nursing homes who are physically disabled and below pensionable age, we are prepared to pay £230 a week.
To the hon. Gentleman that is an outrage. It is something that he condemns. However, the great majority of people, not only the elderly but their relatives, welcome and applaud it. The great majority of people recognise that there has to be a limit. They realise that there has been an explosion in numbers. In 1978, 7,000 people were receiving residential care fees. In 1984, that figure had risen to 42,000. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome that increase in the provision made by the state to a particularly vulnerable section of the community, but he does not. He condemns it.
He does so because so many of these people have the effrontery to seek, in co-operation with the social security budget of the Department of Health and Social Security, entry into private nursing homes. The hon. Gentleman wants them to go into local authority homes. He has picked out some bad private homes. We must continue to seek out the bad private residential homes and nursing homes. That is precisely why an inspection system was introduced two years ago to supervise home care provision and the registration fee system, to which I shall refer in a moment.
Does the hon. Gentleman say that there are no bad local authority homes? Let him discuss that question with his hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman). He should discuss with her what happened in Southwark at the appropriately named Aneurin Bevan home. Let him discuss with her whether those old people would prefer to be in an adequately inspected, properly run voluntary residential or private residential home or nursing home or in a local authority home in Southwark. The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that question.
The Government recognise the importance of residential care for the elderly. That is why so large a part of our national resources has been devoted to it, why fees have been increased to the levels that I have already

mentioned, why we are conducting a study to make sure that fees are kept in line with inflation and why the problems confronting particular categories are examined carefully and kept under careful review.
I have no doubt that the mix that we have achieved, and that we shall continue to maintain and improve, of local authority statutory provision and voluntary and private sector provision is the right way to go. We do not share the hon. Gentleman's vision that that percentage of our community—happily a small percentage—who need residential accommodation should be accommodated willy-nilly, without choice, in local authority homes. Of course there are good local authority homes, and we applaud and support them. But there are also good voluntary and private residential homes. That is a mix, which implies individual choice, freedom and responsibility, that most people welcome.
The hon. Gentleman finds it reprehensible that there were 910 homes in 1979 and that that figure has increased to 1,537 by 1983. I do not find that figure dismaying. I find it something to be pleased about. It means that our elderly population have a greater choice and that the support that the Government are able to offer to them through the social security system, which is constantly kept under review, can be deployed throughout the whole sector of community care.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central has a deep-rooted antagonism to private enterprise and to the operation of the market. I suggest—perhaps I would be wasting my time if I tried to make this suggestion to the hon. Gentleman—that most people consider that, having more homes in the market and more competition, obtaining better value for money, whether private or public, must be in the interests of society and of elderly people. We know that it is a great deal of public money.
Of course, standards must be maintained and that is precisely why we have taken such care in our activities with local authorities in terms of registration and inspection of these homes. Recently, we announced a substantial increase in the registration fee for private homes, from £100 to £500. To put it mildly, that measure was not welcomed by owners of residential homes. We did that because we attached great importance to the proper inspection of these homes to ensure that standards are adequate to meet the needs of our elderly people and to ensure that local authorities do not face additional burdens.
We are proud of our achievements in the promotion and preservation of residential care for the elderly. Happily, only a small minority need this accommodation. The objective must be, as the hon. Gentleman recognised, for the majority of elderly people to stay in their own homes. That is why I am glad that personal social services, the number of home helps and our spending generally on the elderly, including retirement pensioners, are at record levels.

Runaway Children (London)

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: I appreciate having the opportunity to raise a problem of growing concern throughout the Western world—runaway children. There is no comprehensive policy or practice covering runaway children, but an encouraging project has been set up by the Children's Society to meet this worrying need.
There is evidence that this is a growing problem throughout the Western world. It has been estimated that more than 4,000 young people ran away to London alone last year. In America, the number has reached epidemic proportions, with the federal Government spending $20 million a year dealing with the needs of runaway children and their families. These children are especially vulnerable to crime, either as victims or as perpetrators. They can easily become involved in drugs, vice and prostitution—street crime—and be in great moral danger.
Before I became a Member, I was for many years on the executive of the Children's Society and resigned only when my husband became chairman.
I am pleased that similar rules do not apply in this place to the joint activities of husbands and wives. During the 1970s, there was great concern about the plight of the homeless and the serious lack of housing for young people. The film "Johnny Come Home", which was based on a genuine case, aroused great public anxiety. A number of agencies, such as Alone in London, Centrepoint, and the Soho project, joined to see what they could do. Coinciding with its centenary in 1981, the Children's Society inevitably began to think about its roots and background. It thought that it would be appropriate to devote its energies to the problem of homeless young people.
The Children's Society was founded in 1881 by a young civil servant named Edward Rudolf, who taught at the Sunday school at St. Anne's, Vauxhall, where I used to teach. Mr. Rudolf noticed that two boys who had been regularly attending the Sunday school suddenly went missing. He searched for them and found them begging outside the local gasworks. It transpired that the boys' father had died, leaving the mother with no income and a family to support. She was not prepared to allow the whole family to go into the workhouse, so she decided that the two young boys, aged 10 or 11, should be able to survive for themselves.
When looking for a home for the boys, Edward Rudolf discovered that, unlike the free churches, the established church had no answer to the problem of homeless children or runaways. As a result, a society known as the Waifs and Strays was formed, responding to the needs of thousands of children on the streets of Britain's great cities. In its first annual report, the Children's Society stated that there were an estimated 20,000 homeless children in London alone.
In its attempt to respond to the present day needs of children on the streets following discussions with other interested agencies, and with the assistance of Camden and Westminster social services departments, with the advice and co-operation of the Metropolitan police and with significant resources from the Minister's Department, the Children's Society was able to start the central London teenage project. The project is based in a large terraced house in north London. It has a kitchen, bedrooms for 12,

meeting rooms and rooms for private interviews and looks like any other house in the street. Efforts have been made not to publicise the address, so that the young people who come to the house can feel safe from casual visits or intrusions. Young people under the age of 17–19 if in the care of a local authority—who are found homeless on the streets of London are referred to the project by the police, voluntary agencies or the social services departments.
It is not surprising that many of these young people arrive at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. When a new person comes to the house, the staff try to establish trust as the basic requirement for working with the young person. The staff then make contact with the individual's home, but that is only attempted with the young person in attendance, so that he or she knows what is being said.
The staff are clearly in a sensitive position, knowing that they have a duty towards the young person, but, at the same time, if they lose that young person's confidence the young person may well resort to running away again. The young people are given at least 48 hours before their future is decided. During that time, there are negotiations between the project staff, parents, local authorities and other agencies. Parents who wish to contact their children are given free telephone access.
Crucially it is important that help is provided to stop that young person from running away once more. Some young people change their residential setting and others are received into local authority care. In other cases, collaboration, co-operation and essential understanding are attempted between the parents and the child.
Each young person and each family is treated individually so that their solutions are tailored to meet their cases. Above all, the project is followed up with a telephone call to the young person one month later.
On the basis of the 200 young people who have stayed at the centre since it was founded, various findings have emerged. I applaud the way in which the Children's Society has researched the findings of its project. It is only too easy spontaneously to set up an agency to meet a perceived need and then make no rigorous investigation to discover whether it is in fact effectively meeting that need.
The majority of the young people at the centre were between 13 and 16 years of age, although the full age range was between 11 and 21. Of those children, 63 per cent. had run away from home. When exploring the reasons for their running away, breakdown of communications and a lack of understanding between parents and the child were the reasons most frequently given. There appeared to be an inability to discuss problems in the family. Physical and sexual violence were also all too frequently present. It is understandable that child sexual abuse, which has been so powerfully highlighted this week by the NSPCC, is a topic that is particularly difficult for families to deal with, and running away from home can seem to be the solution for the young person involved. Problems of bullying at school and of perceived failure were also mentioned.
Equally worrying, one third of the children had run away from local authority care, which raises questions about the quality of that provision. They mentioned unhappiness, the desire for independence and dislike of the children's home or of the area from which they had come. Bullying by peers was again mentioned. For those children, the solution seemed to be to abandon the home.
Forty per cent. of the children came from London and the south-east, the others from all over the country. When asked what help or advantage had been provided, they said that the project had helped them to think and to sort themselves out, perhaps fulfilling the function that grandparents or distant relations can play in less fragmented families. The project highlighted for young people the dangers of trying to survive in London and the staff were seen as trustworthy and available, demonstrating that the project meets an important need at this stage.
A few key issues need to be addressed. The co-operation of the police has clearly been vital in the development of the project. They need to relax their enforcement of the law which obliges them to return children and young people to their parents or guardians. In the review of child care law, some voluntary agencies have argued for special treatment in dealing with the delicate borderland between the child as an independent person and the child as the responsibility of the parents. If the agency enforces return to an unpopular home, the problem may simply recur, but on the second occasion the young person is unlikely to seek help from an agency. That is not to misunderstand the deep unhappiness of parents whose children have gone missing and who desperately want some source of reassurance or certainty as to what has happened to their children.
A further issue focused by the project is the need for centralised reporting of runaways. The Metropolitan police missing persons bureau does valiant work, but many people in the House and elsewhere feel that there should be more rigorous provision for the reporting of missing persons, especially young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bruinvels) has urged the Government to establish a special unit in the Home Office to pay particular attention to young people who run away.
With regard to the care provided by local authorities, once again the message is that it is essential that young people should be considered and consulted in plans for their future. Too often children feel that the only way to gain any control of their own destiny is to flee. There are messages there for social work training and child care practice generally in making young people feel that they are being consulted, their views heard, and attention paid to their needs.
The contribution and assistance of the Department of Health and Social Security are clearly very important to the project and to similar facilities run by other groups. The recent announcement of the £25,000 grant has made a significant difference. However, I also believe that the proposals in the Budget substantially to improve the tax relief given on charitable donations should dramatically benefit the Children's Society in common with many other charities. Not only are single gifts by companies, up to an amount equal to 3 per cent. of the dividends paid by the company to its shareholders, to be exempt from tax, but payroll giving by individuals is to be encouraged. Employees will be able to give to charities through deductions from wages or salaries.
I hope that, with a greater awareness of the need, individuals and groups throughout the country will take the opportunity to devote resources to a service which, in my view, is fundamentally one that is best met by the voluntary agencies. Ministers are frequently urged in the

House to make more local authority provision to meet various needs. I feel that the voluntary agencies have a legitimate and powerful role in pioneering social care and in meeting as yet unrecognised needs. Especially in the case of young people who have frequently been subject to perhaps less than favourable local authority experiences in the past, that seems to me to be an eminently proper and appropriate use of resources.
Finally, apart from leading to more charitable giving and support, I hope that greater awareness of projects such as this will lead to greater sensitivity in the children's home areas. It is important that the signs of unhappiness in children should be recognised, whether at school or at home or through the clergy and all the others in the community who need increasingly to recognise that the solution to the local problems is only rarely to flee. We know only too well from too many cases over the years of the dangers to the young people and the damage that can result—quite apart from the misery suffered by their caretakers—if they choose that way out.
I appreciate having had this opportunity to talk about the central London teenage project, which was developed by the Children's Society at a time when my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) was chairman of the society and which has, I feel, made a particularly important contribution.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Ray Whitney): I am happy to respond to this debate. Yet again, my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley) has raised a most important subject. I believe that the matter has never yet been considered in the House. As she said, my hon. Friend has been closely involved for some time with that very important voluntary organisation, the Church of England Children's Society, before the little local difficulty that she encountered because my hon. Friend and her husband the Under-Secretary of State for Transport became chairman. Day by day I learn more about my hon. Friend's deep knowledge and experience in those areas. The revelation that—on top of everything else that she has to offer—she even taught in the same Sunday school as Edward Rudolf adds yet more distinction to her record.
This phenomenon of runaway children in London is a serious one. It is not new. In effect, it has been with us for centuries. We have some figures, although by the nature of the subject they are not reliable. I am advised that in 1985, 2,982 children, of whom 869 were younger than 14 and 2,113 were aged between 14 and 17, were reported to the Metropolitan police to be missing within the Metropolitan police area. At the end of last year, only 146 remained missing. However, every day that a child is lost causes some relative, parent or carer to suffer acute concern. We should not be led wholly astray by some of the more lurid descriptions of what might happen. The dangers of prostitution and entering the drugs scene exist, and we must be alert to them. Many children in those statistics return home in a matter of days. Nevertheless, it is important that appropriate help should be available in London and all our major cities for children who run away or are reported missing.
There is no problem about those who are ready to be found. The police and social services departments of the London boroughs are only too anxious to restore them to


their homes. The police respond immediately to those who are truly missing, and actively use all their resources to find the child. Tragically, some children who disappear are abducted, perhaps seriously assaulted and sometimes killed. Such cases of horror and distress cause us all anxiety.
The police respond in such cases with the greatest commitment. Many children return home late and are unaware of the consequences of that. If a child disappears, it is vital to contact the police as early as possible. They will ensure that everything possible is done with the utmost speed to trace the child. An essential part of that is the need for immediate publicity in those crucial early stages of disappearance. Although the television and radio bring us all problems, they also bring us the benefit of reaching a wide audience. Certainly, they have been used to great advantage, and, obviously, we shall continue to ensure that that is the case.
Voluntary organisations and local authorities, especially in the London area, naturally have an important part to play. Like my hon. Friend I wish to emphasise the great significance of the Church of England Children's Society project—the central London teenage project. As my hon. Friend said, it grew from the concern of voluntary and statutory agencies in the west end about the growing number of under-age young runaways in the west end. It provided a breathing space for a few days for them to talk things over with an understanding and sympathetic worker so that an acceptable resolution of their problem could be found.
Young people relied mainly on the voluntary agencies in the west end for support and help which at that time had neither the legal authority nor the resources to meet the needs of this vulnerable group. That frequently led to young people being sent straight back home and back to precisely the problems from which they had sought to escape, resulting all too often in youngsters running away again and failing to be contacted by the voluntary agencies. That meant that a number of young, vulnerable people were surviving alone in central London, prey to the dangers of street existence, exploitation, crime, prostitution and drugs.
The project aims to assess the needs of young people referred to it by other agencies. Its operation seems to be admirable. I understand that the project provides a safe house and residential provision for young people under the age of 17, or in care up to the age of 19, and that that is an effective contribution to the problem.
As my hon. Friend said, recently we were happily able to provide a capital sum of £50,000 towards the purchase

price of the accommodation, and we have given £25,000 towards the running costs in the coming financial year. Certainly, we believe that this is an example of the way in which we can co-operate with the statutory sector on the one hand and the voluntary sector on the other.
I endorse the point my hon. Friend made about the importance of the measures announced by our right hon. Friend the Chancellor in his Budget. Those offer opportunities not only to companies but to individuals for payroll giving. Those measures will take effect from April 1987. I take this opportunity and shall take many others to urge all the charities in the personal social services sector not to hang back but to seize this exciting opportunity that has been provided by the Chancellor. The charities should make sure that the opportunity is used to good effect.
We are looking for a combination of action by central Government—whether through the DHSS or other Government Departments—by local authorities sand by voluntary organisations. In many areas, whether in the area of runaway children in London or in any of the other personal social service areas with which my hon. Friend is familiar, it is a combination of action that can provide the best answer. Quite clearly, the state cannot provide all the resources, nor can it provide all the expertise or the insight and the care that are needed. As I have often said in the House, much help can be generated in society and we can mobilise society to help solve these problems. The Church of England teenage project in London that my hon. Friend spoke about is a splendid example of that genre and I commend it as an excellent means of dealing with a special problem.

Mrs. Bottomley: Does my hon. Friend agree that projects of this sort have the added advantage of being organised and funded primarily by voluntary agencies? Many young people who use the project feel somewhat disenchanted with statutory agencies.

Mr. Whitney: I agree with my hon. Friend. That is an important point and of course my hon. Friend is speaking from experience. It contrasts rather interestingly with the last debate during which the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) seemed to think that only the statutory agencies can do good.

Mr. George Foulkes: He did not say that.

Mr. Whitney: He seems to believe that. The hon. Gentleman should read his speech. The most effective way is a partnership and the partnership to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention is a splendid example.

Scottish Tertiary Education Advisory Council

Mr. George Foulkes: I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words about the Scottish Tertiary Education Advisory Council report, and especially the college education part of it. What I say will almost be the last gasp of the House before the Easter recess, but of course the Minister will have the last gasp. There has already been a debate on the subject in the Scottish Grand Committee, but I am sure the Minister will agree that things have moved on since then, and, as we are almost at the close of submissions in the consultation period, this is an appropriate time for the Minister to comment on the report.
The importance of the issue for the Opposition is examplified by the fact that we have in the House my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton). They are two of our Front Bench spokesmen in the Scottish team. I am worried about the colleges of education and about recommendations 913 and 914 in the report. I support some of the other recommendations, but we are not dealing with those today.
I cannot understand why the report contains a gratuitous recommendation about the colleges of education. According to the report, it is with some reluctance that its authors make that recommendation. I wish that they had allowed their reluctance to overcome them and not come up with any recommendations. They were not asked to consider making such a recommendation. That was not included specifically in their remit, and the recommendation is somewhat gratuitous.
There have been two reviews of the colleges of education in Scotland within the past decade. There was one in 1977, and a second one in 1980. The uncertainty that has hung over the colleges over the past decade has been unhelpful, and to raise further uncertainty is doubly unhelpful.
Some have suggested that the vice-chairman of STEAC, Mr. Tom Bone, might have influenced the recommendation to which I have referred to safeguard the position of Jordanhill college of education. I hope that that is not the case. I must say, however, that I did wonder where the recommendation had come from and how it had arisen again.
In reality, the substantial question mark that hangs over the colleges should not be there at all. Instead, the question mark should be hanging over the committee's recommendations and its projections of pupil numbers and, secondly, the consequent effect on the number of students and teachers in the colleges.
I received today the Scottish Education Department's statistical bulletin, which contradicts what has been advanced by STEAC. I hope the Minister will confirm that the bulletin shows that in 1984 there were 438,000 primary pupils in Scotland, and projects that in 1987 there will be 334,000. I acknowledge that that is a downturn, but by the end of the century there will be 484,000, on a conservative estimate, if one might use the term.
It is probably safer and more sensible to consider the high variant. It is relatively easy to close colleges of education, but it is difficult to open them or to make

available additional places. In considering the high variant, we see that numbers rise steadily until the year 2000, when we shall return to the 1979–80 level. It should be said that the previous review took place after 1979–80.
The SED's statistics contradict those which STEAC has put forward. Equally spectacularly, the General Teaching Council, which is the Secretary of State's adviser on the supply of teachers, disagreed recently with the STEAC report and its recommendations and said that the colleges should remain open. The council is an extremely powerful body. All relevant statistics are available to it and its membership embraces the entire breadth of education knowledge. Represented on it are local authorities, the colleges of education and many other organisations. With no disrespect to STEAC, one or two business men and one or two educationists do not have the same depth of knowledge as the members of the council.
The STEAC report presupposes no improvement in the quality of education, no improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio and no in-service training. I hope that the next Government, who we know will be a Labour Government, will want to see an improvement in the quality of education. That will be difficult to achieve if the colleges of education do not exist. I am arguing that the seven colleges must stay open. If there is a temporary downturn in teacher numbers in the next year or two, that can be accommodated, especially in the larger colleges, by a downturn in the intake. We must take account of the upsurge in demand that will take place in the ensuing years.
I wish to concentrate my remarks on the Craigie college of education, which is in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), the Secretary of State for Defence. The college serves the whole of Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway and is our community college. I do not concentrate on Craigie because I have no concern for the other colleges. Indeed, I have concern for them all, and some of the arguments that can be advanced in support of the other six colleges are those that apply to Craigie. I shall concentrate on Craigie because I know it well and because there are six arguments which relate to it and which the representatives of Craigie advanced forcefully to the Minister. I am sure the Minister will agree that they produced an excellent and forceful submission.
The first is a geographical argument which applies equally to a number of the other colleges, particularly Aberdeen. There is a concentration of teacher education in Scotland. It is becoming highly centralised compared with England and Wales, and the Craigie submission has a map to show that. Craigie serves Dumfries and Galloway and Strathclyde, along with Jordanhill and St. Andrew's colleges. Those two regions have a population equivalent to Wales. But whereas Wales has 11 institutions with pre-service training spread throughout the country, west Scotland, equivalent in size and population, has only three. If the recommendations went ahead, there could be more centralisation in Scotland.
I today received a letter from the Minister, answering some points that I had raised, in which he says that if any of the closures go ahead, outstations could be provided.

Mr. John Maxton: The Minister has said that before.

Mr. Foulkes: Exactly. My hon. Friend used to teach at Hamilton, and he knows only too well. The evidence


of Craiglockhart, Hamilton and Callendar Park is not encouraging. Outstation provision remains in only two, and it is in one or two rented classrooms, with only a handful of staff.
A local college knows the schools, and the schools know the college. The link between the school and college is important. The majority of the output of Craigie college finds employment in south-west Scotland. The Craigie product has a high reputation. STEAC mentions the importance of continuing education, and that would be helped by having a college, not an outstation, with all the range of expertise, support and advice that only a college can offer.
The second argument in favour of Craigie is its good employment record. That is not easy in these days of high unemployment, as the Minister knows. The Craigie product is known in the south-west of Scotland as being of a high standard. In January 1984, 82 per cent. of the output was employed, compared with between 16 and 46 per cent. in other colleges. In January 1985 it was 73 per cent., and in January 1986 it was up to 92 per cent. Craigie-trained teachers are a high quality product.
The third argument, which is one which I do not advance, but it has been put forward by STEAC, the Public Accounts Committee and others, relates to cost-effectiveness and efficiency. I am not sure that it is the most important argument, but as it has been argued I shall counter it. The cost per student at Craigie is the lowest of all—£3,421 per student, as we see from page 153 of the report. If Craigie were to be closed—I am not saying that the Minister would contemplate it—students would have to go to Glasgow to be trained and there would be the extra cost of travel from Stranraer, Dumfries and Ayrshire up to Glasgow. There would also be the problem of the extra cost of accommodation in Glasgow, which, as my hon. Friends know, is already greatly strained, as Glasgow has two universities and other colleges.
Fourthly, nothing could provide a stronger case than the efficient use of accommodation in Craigie. Half of Craigie college is used by 400 students from Ayr college—formerly Ayr technical college. Out of the total complement of 800 students at Craigie, that leaves, as even the Minister will be able to work out, 400. The teacher training complement is currently 340, and with the daily community use that brings Craigie up to 800 people regularly using that college—up to its complement—so there is no question that Craigie is not being used to capacity.
The fifth argument is service to the community. The other day the whole theatre at Craigie college was packed with people from all parties, including the Minister's, and all walks of life supporting the college and what it does for the community. People from the Open University, the social work department and community education all said how useful Craigie is to the community.
I am grateful to the Minister for replying to a question today and for mentioning all the representations that he has received. Many of them come from Ayrshire, including from the presbytery there. Robert Burns would not dare to stand against the recommendations of the presbytery of Ayr, and the presbytery of Ayr unanimously supports the retention of Craigie college.
The final argument concerns the partnership between college and university, which STEAC also says is important. For the past 40 years Craigie college has had a superb partnership with the University of Strathclyde. It

is significant that the principal and academic board of Strathclyde university have praised Craigie, and have made submissions to the Minister to ignore the STEAC recommendations and keep Craigie serving the west of Scotland.
Those are the specific arguments for Craigie, and many of them apply equally to the other colleges. I am in favour of all seven staying open. But if one final argument was needed to convince the Minister and the Secretary of State about the foolishness of closing any college, it would be that they should look at those which have already been closed by the Minister or his predecessor. In a written answer to me on 3 February the Minister confirmed—[Interruption.] I must say, I do not like that barracking from my own Front Bench.
In a written answer to me on 3 February the Minister confirmed that there are still no firm proposals for the long-term use of Callendar Park college of education, which was closed about five years ago. No revenue at all has accrued to the Government from that. Moreover, we all recall the scandal of the sale of the Hamilton college buildings at a knockdown price by the Minister's predecessor, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher). They were sold to a somewhat dubious character who is also involved in a pretty sinister campaign for law and order, with which the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens) is connected. To sell Hamilton college to a sort of Mary Whitehouse in trousers was not a sensible step. I hope that the Minister will get his inspectors to look at what is going on in that private institution. It would bear very careful scrutiny.
It is much better to keep the colleges, which are a vital part of Scottish education, serving their communities in the variety of ways that I have outlined. During the next few weeks the Minister and the Secretary of State will have to take account of the various recommendations. The Minister said that one or two supported the STEAC recommendations. I cannot think who they are. I suppose that one might be Jordanhill college, but there cannot be many of them. I see that the Minister is nodding, so that must be the only one.
Educational and community interests, as well as many other people, are overwhelmingly against the closure of any of the seven colleges. I think that I speak on behalf of all Members of Parliament for the south-west of Scotland, and on behalf of councillors and the community as a whole, when I say that there will be a monumental outcry if Craigie is not kept open. Surely the Minister and even this Government believe that Scottish education is a vital part of Scottish life.

Mr. Donald Dewar: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) on raising this important matter in such a timely fashion, as we are just coming to the end of the consultation period. He has given the Minister fair notice that it is an anxious issue, which is likely to arouse strong feelings before it runs its course. It is, therefore, important that we should have a chance to consider it, albeit briefly today.
It is an anxious issue because an aura of uncertainty has surrounded the colleges of education for a long time. The Minister will be aware that during the past decade the student population has fallen by about 53 per cent., which


represents a substantial drop. There has been a rather sad record of closures. The history of Hamilton and Callendar Park underlines some of the difficulties that can arise.
I have considerable admiration for the work put in by Donald MacCallum and his colleagues on the STEAC report. It is on the whole a lively and largely optimistic report. The last passages on the colleges of education were sparingly phrased and skeletal in their arguments. The conclusion was not buttressed by substantial argument. I found that part of the report unconvincing.
Paragraph 5.39 of the report contained the key factor on which the committee based its recommendations. The assumption was that there would be a peak in the number of students in pre-service training of about 5,000. Everyone who has looked even casually at the arguments will know that the Scottish Education Department has taken a more optimistic view of the number of places which are likely to be needed. In 1984–85, the estimate was 5,250, but the estimate for 1985–86 was 7,380. That figure came out in evidence to the Public Accounts Committee.
In the same period, the number of places for primary school training, which is particularly important to Craigie, the esimated rise was from 1,780 to 3,500. That underlines what we already suspected—that the statistical base on which the recommendation was made is not made out. That is the kindest way of putting it.
The Minister suggested at Scottish Question Time yesterday that the report was well considered. I do not dissent from that as a generalisation, but, on the face of it, that cannot be applied to the particular passage to which I referred.
We must also take into account the need for growth in in-service training. The SED predicted a small decrease in the number of other users of colleges which I do not accept. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley that to talk, for example, of the development of outstations is not entirely satisfactory. I thought that outstations had something to do with sheep-rearing in Western Australia. It is not a satisfactory answer in terms of being a substitute for the in-depth service that a college of education can give to a community.
I recognise the need for up-to-date information. The Public Accounts Committee said that forcefully. The Minister talked about the computerised analysis of available accommodation and course requirements. Somebody is obviously trying to make him literate, since they cannot make him numerate. I hope that the Minister will take seriously the view that the case for closure has not been made out. Much depends upon what is fed into a computer and who assesses the results. We are anxious that not too much weight is given to Treasury evidence but that proper weight is given to education priorities when reaching a final decision.
We do not deny the case for rationalisation. There will be changes in staff-pupil ratios. There may be a case for a more efficient use of resources and courses. I hope that the case for further closures will not be accepted when there is no substantial argument for making those closures.
We must put an end to the uncertainty, but we do not want to be rushed into a narrow, book-keeping approach to the exercise when so much is at stake.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart): I congratulate the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) on his success in securing this debate on the report of the Scottish Tertiary Education Advisory Council and its implications for Scottish colleges of education. As the hon. Member recognised, in one sense the debate is peculiarly timely because it is the last official day for comments to be submitted on the STEAC report.
On the other hand it is untimely for me and for Opposition Members, as it is extremely difficult for me to comment. We cannot take any decisions on the report until we have fully analysed the representations received. However, I congratulate the hon. Member on putting forward his case, particularly his case for Craigie college. It is unfortunate that he spoilt the objective tenor of his remarks by his wholly unjustified remarks about my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Fletcher).
I remind the House of the policy which was confirmed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland during the debate on STEAC in the Scottish Grand Committee in Edinburgh in January. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley also referred to that debate. My right hon. and learned Friend said that the consultation period would continue until Easter and that no decisions would be taken until views had been received during that period. We have received a large number of views. We have received a petition from the Scottish members of the National Union of Students. The first signature on the petition was that of the leader of the Opposition. No doubt the House will wish him well in his studies as a Scottish undergraduate.
We are not rigid about the closing date for representations. I recognise there may be some comments that will be received during the Easter period. We have received about a hundred representations and indeed, at the rate at which comments have been received—I have not yet checked on this morning's post—we shall receive well over a hundred specifically about the colleges of education. However, the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and the Doon Valley will recognise that my answer concerns the most up-to-date information. I will of course report to the House on the decisions taken in relation to STEAC.

Mr. Foulkes: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, as I am aware I have taken up much of the time of the debate. He has confirmed the information in his original written answer but will he bring it up to date and confirm to the House that the vast majority of representations in relation to the recommendation of STEAC on colleges of education are against its recommendations and in favour of keeping all seven colleges open?

Mr. Stewart: The hon. Member will recognise that there are 23 recommendations in the STEAC report. Some of them are important and are widely accepted. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and the Doon Valley will recognise that the report, in general, has been well received. I confirm to the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and the Doon Valley that it is true that the majority of the representations we have received in


relation to the recommendations on the colleges of education have been opposed to the STEAC recommendations.
STEAC recommended that steps should be taken to reduce the number of colleges of education to three nondenominational institutes plus one Roman Catholic college. Hon. Members who represent the official Opposition have given us their views on that. The Liberals and the Social Democratic party did not express their views yesterday and are not present today. It would be helpful if I told the House I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, North East (Mr. Henderson) for informing me that at the Educational Institute of Scotland council the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) confirmed the alliance view that the majority of Scottish colleges of education should be retained. Perhaps I should add that at least for the Conservative party and doubtless for the Labour party, if not the Liberals, four out of seven constitutes a majority.
I cannot confirm when decisions will be taken on the recommendations until we have considered the various representations received.
I must say to Opposition members that we are not committed to responding to all the recommendations at the same time because many of the recommendations of the STEAC report are not controversial. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and the Doon Valley listed a number of questions about the future of colleges of education and particularly Craigie college. It was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame North (Mr. Corrie) during Scottish questions yesterday, and it is, of course, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. I confirm to the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley that, in considering Craigie, as with the other colleges, we shall take into account all the relevant factors and ensure that decisions are appropriate on educational grounds, which was the point made by the hon. Member for Garscadden, as well as cost-effective.
The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley emphasised most the point about numbers and surplus capacity. It is common ground that there is surplus capacity. In its report, STEAC said in paragraph 5.34:
While we accept that there will be a growth in numbers in primary schools at least and that some reversal of the trend in student numbers in the colleges of education during the next decade will be required, we do not foresee the stage being reached again when all seven colleges of education will be filled to capacity with trainee teachers, teachers on in-service courses and students on other non-teacher-training courses.
Equally, it is recognised that some of the capacity figures that have been quoted in the past, and to which the hon. Gentleman referred, are less sophisticated than we would wish. I accept the general point that both hon.

Members made that, in taking decisions on the need to effect rationalisation, it is important that we have information available to us that relates actual accommodation to the particular requirements of the current range of courses offered by the colleges. For that reason, my Department, in conjunction with the colleges is carrying out a computerised analysis of available accommodation and course requirements. The hon. Member for Garscadden referred to that.
Let me expand on that point. Over the past two months or so, my Department has met each of the colleges to discuss initial computer prints showing accommodation usage. The initial prints are a working tool only, but in the light of comments made they will be amended to show as realistically as possible the position in each college. The computer model will allow us to test the effect of future population changes. The results of that exercise will be available to inform our decisions on the STEAC report.
I agree with both hon. Members that it is important that decisions are reached on sensible educational grounds. STEAC took the view that there should be rationalisation of courses of secondary teacher training to avoid small numbers of students being spread too thinly over a wide range of specialist subjects. I confirm to the House that, pending the outcome of consultations on STEAC, it would be premature to contemplate radical changes. Therefore, rationalisation in connection with intakes for the session 1986–87 is being carried out without prejudice to the longer-term position.

Mr. Foulkes: The Minister referred to the computerised analysis of availability of accommodation and course requirements, but that does not take account of geographical factors. Scotland represents one third of the land area of the United Kingdom. I hope that at least if the computer does not take account of that, the Minister will.

Mr. Stewart: The hon. Gentleman took the very words out of my mouth. I was about to say that the up-to-date information on capacity and on the projections of student numbers is vital. I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that the Government will of course take fully into account geographical and other factors, and the importance of in-service training to which both hon. Members referred.
No doubt the House or perhaps the Scottish Grand Committee will return to the subject when the Government have reached their decisions. For the moment, I confirm to the House that I shall study carefully and in detail the points that both hon. Members put to me during the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Three o'clock pursuant to resolution of the House [25 March].